The Body Politic : Melbourne Indymedia

THE BODY POLITIC

Miss World Australia: Meat Market or the Modern Australian
Woman?

The Miss World competition was established in 1951 by Eric Morely with the purpose of discovering the most ‘beautiful’ woman in the world. The competition was held in a Bingo Hall, to encourage people to visit the Festival of Britain; in 1951 Miss World was crowned in a bikini. During the 1980s the competition was revamped, and claimed to pay more attention to the personalities of women, in 2003 competition publicists claim that the Miss World contest embodies ‘beauty with a purpose.’ In the 21st Century the competition is televised worldwide and is the third most watched show in the world, with approximately 2.5 viewers. Controversy has surrounded the competition, at times with right-wing fundamentalists and feminists protesting against the contest’s representations of womanhood, as illustrated in Nigeria earlier this year. In the Australian context it is claimed that the competition’s purpose is to ‘capture the modern Australian woman,’ who is ‘a much broader person’ than simply a professional beauty. Is the Miss World competition ‘congruent with what really is going on for a young woman,’ a celebration of beauty, intelligence and womanhood, or simply an affirmation of stifling gender norms, nationalism and sadistic beauty myths?

‘Is it that you possess unique physical beauty? Is keeping fit and healthy a priority? Are you motivated and driven to success? Is your ambition tempered by a desire to help others? Do you value honesty, integrity and live to a high personal standard?’

MWA (Miss World Australia)

Miss world Australia has been revamped in 2003 by the National Investment Institute, and now offers contestants more that $250,000 worth of prizes. Kate Hardiman claims that Miss World Australia is in search of the ‘Modern Australian Woman,’ who is ‘intelligent, driven, beautiful and poised,’ and who will ‘contribute to Australia’s profile.’ According to the publicity information Miss World Australia is ‘more than just a beauty pageant,’ it is an opportunity to discover ‘Australia’s most outstanding young woman,’ and also to provide her with ‘a platform of local achievement and international recognition,’ and an opportunity to be a spokesperson on fundamental issues that our world is facing. Girls at the Melbourne auditions claimed that ‘charity work,’ and the ‘ability to gain a position of power to change the world,’ as contestant Mirinda Birmingham said, was what motived them to enter the competition. Many of the contestants reported that the competition was ‘not as much about beauty anymore,’ and as Bio-medical student Marni Basto said the Miss World Australia competition to her was a recognition of a ‘combination of all achievements,’ a ‘recognition of academic status’ rather than a contest based ‘purely on looks.’ The Miss World winners over the past thirty years have been spokeswomen for issues such as AIDS, domestic violence, racism, poverty, and have had a broad range of academic achievements prior to the competition.

The competition itself on some levels appears to be an opportunity for a woman to showcase her talents and intellect, the contentious criteria suggests that the Miss World Competition still remains traditional in it’s attitudes toward physical appearance and ideal feminine behaviour. The criteria set down by the international body requires that applicants must

a) be born female and be between 18-24 years of age on 30 December 2003
f) never have been married
g) never have given birth to a child or not be pregnant

There is also a class-based assumption implicit in the publicity material that suggests that Miss World Australia would be middle to upper-middle class, by claiming that Miss World Australia would be able to ‘make a difference’, by ‘supporting young women who come from lower socio-economic backgrounds and other difficult situations.’ As Banet-Weiser, author of ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,’ suggested, the competition attempts to maintain the squeaky clean girl next door image, while upholding a fantasy of sexual inexperience and chastity. Controversy surrounding Miss World contestants sexual ‘honour,’ their femininity, with contestants being threatened with disqualification, simply because they ‘enjoyed a drink,’ Barnett-Weiser in her study of the Miss America pageant, (that enters its winner in the Miss World competition), wrote that it is a ‘pageant that vehemently maintains it is an event that showcases feminine respectability and morality.’ (1) Although commendable changes have been made to structure of the Miss World Australia competition, such as the elimination of the bikini competition where ‘women have to strut around in a bikini and stilettos,’ which according to Kate Hardiman, competition organizer and publicist, is ‘irrelevant,’ the traditional rules set down by the international body are still strictly adhered to. Hardiman claims that this criteria is ‘set down by the international body,’ and although debatable, are the ‘rules by which people must play,’ and ‘until they are changed contestants must abide by them.’ Hardiman said that an entrant with a three year old child was found out and disqualified ‘embarrassed,’ the country, which was ‘disappointing and deceptive on behalf of the entrant.’

The Miss World and Miss Universe pageant have been criticized on numerous occasions for reinforcing and encouraging sadistic and racist beauty norms. Banet-Weiser claims that the competition is based on a wish to ‘define universal beauty norms,’ and has been based on a ‘history of celebrating universal whiteness,’ and western ideas of femininity and womanhood. She claims that the ‘non-white body functions as a spectre- the marked other- against which the ideal female citizen is defined.’(2) Controversy has surrounded the use of sadistic beauty rituals such as plastic surgery, particularly in cases in South America, most poignantly Venezuela, where the likes of Osmel Sousa sculpt, butcher, carve and implant Venezuelan women, who on many occasions have been Miss World and Miss Universe.(3) Hardiman claims you ‘wouldn’t hear anyone from the Miss World Organization taking a girl aside and recommending she needed a boob-job.’ Although the competition organizers may not openly make such requests, the pressure to meet the ‘universal beauty norm,’ is enormous, and women often do undertake surgery, rigorous and strenuous exercise routine in order to fulfil the aesthetic demands of the competition. Bio-medical Marni Basto, when asked her opinion on plastic surgery in context with the competition claimed although ‘she wouldn’t get anything done,’ she can understand how this happens in this environment, as ‘as they (contestants) progress they have to match it with some of the best girls in the world’ and ‘to be at their level,’ you may ‘have to get breast implants etc,’ attitudes to plastic surgery do change in ‘different environments.’ Contestants considered Halle Berry, Christie Turlington, and Claudia Schiffer and other professional ‘beauties,’ to be among their most beautiful, who have been known to take drastic measures to maintain their ‘beautiful’ appearances. Measurements, eye-colour, weight, dress size, and hair colour, continue to be of fundamental importance and still remain listed on the application form.

Dissent, protest, surrounding the competition has been contentious and even fatal, as exemplified earlier this year in Nigeria. It is alleged that 200 people were killed in right-wing Christian/Muslim riots, that were sparked off by a newspaper article that suggested that the prophet Mohammed would have possibly married one of the contestants, bomb threats also forced the competition organizers to relocate the venue, causing a great deal of disruption to bookmakers, and bets placed on participants of the competition.(4) In 1996 the competition was staged and held in the city of Bangalore in India. Thousands of protesters surrounded the location, and more than 10,000 state troops were there to ‘enforce order.’ Amongst the protesters where members from the right-wing extremist Hindu Bharata Janata Party, who organized a two hour strike, and a ‘suicide squad was formed of women ready to immolate themselves if the pageant event,’ on the opposing side were women’s rights activists and feminists protesting against the objectification of women.(5)

Prior to this during the 1970 Miss World contest twenty five women bought tickets to the event, waited for a signal, charged and through stink bombs, flour bombs, and shot Bob Hope (the host) with water pistols. Jenny Fourtune, a woman involved in the protest claimed ‘we wanted to get across the idea that there was more to women than their vital statistics,’ and that ‘they had to stand up in the face of male authority, and speak out.’ According to supporters of the competition, the Miss World competition was driven off their screens by ‘harpies in their boilers and spiky hair.’ This protest was not focussed on the event itself but the wider exploitation of women in society. One of the protesters outside the event held a placard reading ‘Mis-fortune demands equal pay for women, Mis-conception demands free abortion for all women, Mis-placed demands a place outside the home,’ and threw high-heeled shows and other ‘instruments of torture,’ into the ‘Freedom Trash Can,’ during the second wave of feminism that focussed on issues including beauty, abortion, and the ‘body politic.’ At the time Miss World winners where paid 30,000 pounds a year, ironically while the average woman’s annual wage was 10 pounds. (5) In 1989 a Miss California contestant also protested by pulling a banner from her swimsuit that read ‘PAGEANTS HURT ALL WOMEN.’(6)

Beauty pageants, beauty ‘myths’ and traditional ideas of femininity have been explored by many feminists. Germaine Greer in her book the Whole Woman, claims that ‘The Miss World contest reinforces Anglo-capitalist values and imposes Anglo-capitalist norms by recognizing only one physical type as having any pretensions whatsoever to beauty.’(7) In her analysis of the Miss America pageant, and the Miss World pageant, Banett-Weiser claims that ‘women are considered both guardians of national morality and the largest threat to its moral foundation,’ and a field on which gender and ethnicity are constructed and enacted. (8) From a Focaultian perspective, raced and gendered bodies, in cultural rituals such as the ‘Miss World,’ competition are of interest because of the ways in which they shape, ‘discipline, and regulate’ the subject and the subjects desires, by ‘complicated and circulating discourses of power.’Bannett-Weiser claimed that there is a level of ‘excess,’ that the competition exudes, and anticipates ‘particular connotations of desire,’ and is perhaps evidence of a World Wide ‘gender crisis.’(9)

UNAPOLIGETIC OPINION

It is a sad but true reality, that in the twenty-first century two and a half billion people in this world still watch and engage, in this competition which still heralds the swimsuit competition, evening gown, talent, and assesses women on rigidity and poise. The competition in my précised opinion, is objectifying, preserves elitist and sadistic norms of beauty and femininity, along with the subject that in turn reinforces these ideas. As Greer wrote and as the competition patently asserts, despite its efforts to modernize, that ‘regardless of all her other achievements, she (a woman) is a failure if she is not beautiful.’ Although we as women are surrounded by inexorable images of ageless, contorted, controlled, masked faces and bodies we must not walk the plank, the runway, and stitch ourselves into body bags that will never fit. As Judith Butler claimed ‘gender is performative,’ we as women must stop performing compliance, docility, playing the clown, stop jumping through flaming hoops, and end the freakshow.

(1) Banet-Weiser, Sarah. The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity. Berkley: University of California Press: 1999.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Lester, Time. Venzuela Beauty. Foreign Correspondent, (Dated aired) 12/6/2002.
(4)Cawthorne, Andrew. ‘Miss World to emerge from the shadow of deaths,’ (website) http:/http://www.tiscali.co.uk. Date published: 5/12/2002 18:44
(5)Nothing to Protest about anymore (website) http://www.expressindia.com. Date published: Saturday, April 11, 1998.
(6) Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. London: Vintage: 1990, pp288
(7) Banet-Weiser, Sarah. The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity. Berkley: University of California Press: 1999.
(9) Ibid.
(10)Ibid.