Walking the Ramps of a Beauty Pageant

Walking the Ramps of a Beauty Pageant Christopher Lowell once said, "Beauty is not skin deep…." but is it really so with the exposure of today's generation to media's promotion of their own concept of beauty? Turn on the television and see that most commercials, especially those selling beauty products such as Ponds, Skin White, and Gilette for Women, are endorsed by thin, tall, pimple-free, smooth-legged and fair to white-skinned women. Flip pages of fashion magazines, see fashion shows and discover that models are of the same description. The same goes for beauty contestants in a beauty pageant, wherein there are set standards with regard to one's physical attributes before parading oneself onstage. Certainly, one cannot be called a beauty queen without at least being 5 feet and 5 inches, in a Binibining Pilipinas beauty pageant ("Become"), and not have her vital statistics broadcasted while modeling in a swimsuit. Although beauty pageants, such as the Miss Universe and the Binibining Pilipinas, as a whole supposedly celebrate beauty and femininity, empower women, and give equal importance to women's intelligence and physical beauty, they actually only highlight a narrow-minded or limited standard of beauty and femininity, reduce women to the status of commodity, and emphasize only on physical beauty. The purposes, then, of this paper is to show that through beauty pageants, women are made to accept the concept of beauty as only physical, physical beauty is given much emphasis compared to a woman's intelligence and women are being objectified, all of which will be achieved through presentation of the pros and cons of beauty pageants.
Through the Years of Beauty Pageants Many people have been tuning in to the television broadcasting of beauty pageants both locally and worldwide. Among the prestigious beauty pageants, the Miss Universe is the most watched by children, adolescents, adults, men, and women alike. In 1952, the Miss Universe Beauty Pageant

Cited: Binibining Pilipinas Charities, Inc. 2004 25 September 2004 Candor, Janneth L Perception of Body Types." M.A. thesis, Ateneo de Manila University, 1997. Chapkis, Wendy. Beauty Secrets: Women and the Politics of Appearance. Boston: South End Press, 1986. New York: Routledge, 1997. Schiebinger. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.