Beauty Pageants

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Recommended: Beauty pageants in today's society

Throughout history, mankind has promoted excellence through primitive rituals, community events, and collectively instilled ideals. Beauty pageants represent one of these efforts in their endeavor to define femininity and grace as well as ever-changing gender roles in society. While some believe beauty pageants to be harmless social events that provide educational and national advancement, spawn awareness for charitable causes, and encourage confidence, others suggest that such competitions confuse societal morals, exploit women, and instill insecurity in young girls worldwide.

Since their conception, beauty pageants have ventured to better society and those who reside within it. Such pageants have helped in providing educational and national advancement for their contestants. Pageants “[support] the contestants in the pursuit of higher education” through academic scholarships generally available to finalists that further the intellectual advancement of women (Stoeltje). Contestants also acquire “the symbolic power of representing one's community or nation” in these contests, offering them the opportunity to establish national pride for their country in events such as Miss World (Stoeltje). Their involvement often brings “the dynamic process of the creation of gender roles…in response to historical and socioeconomic circumstances…into the public eye, revealing contradictions, conflicts, and changes as they are evolving” (Stoeltje). Pageants also spawn awareness for charitable causes in the midst of the advertisement of their competitions. They acknowledge and raise funds for local and national charitable causes as well as churches, schools, and businesses in the community. One contest at the Indiana University in Bloomington emph...

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...ublic restrains the natural yet depraved tendency to promote self-absorption at the expense of others. If individuals can conceive their identity through genuine self-exploration free of the choking demands of modern, superficial culture, harmful societal factors such as beauty pageants will cease to darken the hearts of those passionate with the endeavor to discover who they are.

Works Cited

Morgan, Savannah. “Young girls shouldn’t be in beauty pageants.” The Dispatch. 3 Nov 2011. Web. 6 Nov 2011.

"Plea to call off Miss World feminist protest in London." BBC News 5 Nov 2011. Web. 6 Nov. 2011.

Stoeltje, Beverly. "Beauty Pageants." Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Culture Society History 1. (2007): 125-130. Gale. Web. 31 Oct 2011.

Yesuiah, Samuel. "Beauty Contests: Aftermath is women in turmoil, not world peace." New Straits Times 6 Nov 2011. Web. 6 Nov. 2011.

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