Beauty Pageants and Toilet Seats

[bini_bini]

Toilet seats first. I've grown up in a majority female household so up until embarrassingly recently, I thought the seat argument was all about whether or not people paid the courtesy of lowering the LID. I've always thought lowering the lid was a bit like making your bed or ironing tea towels...not strictly necessary but a nice touch. More

Comments

[resuna]

As a man, I would say that your arguement for lowering the seat... "then raising and lowering the seat (or even seat and lid in one action) should require no greater effort"... cuts both ways. That's also the reason that men do NOT lower the seat when finished. It's trivial (to them). Now, personally I lower the seat AND the lid when done because I just don't like to look at a big bowl of waste receiving water when it's not in use. But that's just me.

To me, beauty pageants are very near the top of the list of what's wrong with this world. Reality TV, Starbucks, SUV's, they're all in the same category. I always saw beauty pageants as completely superficial crap, staking one's worth on their clothes and body. The Nazi's thought they could ID a good person by seeing their blonde hair and blue eyes, and a certain height. Heck, even if one of the beauty pageant events was taking the SAT's (which you know darn well would never happen), it's still wrong. Why the heck should we judge someone "the winner" based on their outward physical appeareance? We are essentially condoning their crazy diets and anorexia. We get pissy with all the glamour magazines and how they promote a negative image towards women, how is this not the same thing?

Ultimately - the reason is this: pageants serve no good, and can very much so harm. Analogy - SUV's. Sure they drive you from place to place, but they are hardly the best example of a good device to complete that job, and heck, even work AGAINST that task by wasting fuel so badly. If pageants are the only way for us to help women (the scholarships you mentioned), we got problems.

Then again, democracy means being able to do what you want to do (with certain limitations). So if a woman from Manilla gets a scholarship, then a degree, and a useful job in the world then it's worth it. I'm sure this discussion is much more complex than what I discussed above.

Good post.

[bini_bini]

You see, I agree with all your arguments that put pageants in the superficial, negative objectification basket. But at the same time I am increasingly questioning all my previous hardline black and whites. Why is it that judging someone on their outward appearance and frankly their 'shaggability' according to a certain sector of the audience, worse than judging and ranking people on any other basis? Its genetic - well some would say that physical ability, intellect and even resilience and empathy have genetic and environmental inheritance. It encourages women to harm their bodies - competitive sport encourages steroid use, academic competition demoralises many children. It casts women as sexual objects - isn't that only a bad thing if women have no power over their sexuality.

Ok, I'm playing devil's advocate but I'm a debater from way back - won an interstate competition arguing that 'the world does need more barbies' and cast barbie as a feminist role model / go-getter :).

[resuna]

Judging women (or men, or any group of people) based solely on their physical appearance is no different than judging them based on their music preferences, sexual orientation, or books on their shelves. But I think that's the point - that you cannot judge anyone by one or two criteria. If these "beauty" pageants had sections on the SAT's, their ethics, their contributions to their communities, and so on (all together) then I would not feel so bad.

Another facet might be that the outcome has no real benefit on society. You send a kid off to the SAT's and basically test him on a few select criteria (ability to take a test, memory, science, math). But the outcome of that test is identifying a person who will hopefully go on to become a contributing member of society. What do you get from a beauty pageant winner that will help society? An icon for anorexia? A champion of makeup and good accessorizing?

And perhaps another aspect of it is that it is essentially an implicitly condoned action with repercussions on the rest of society who did not participate in the pageant. By spending all this money on the event, dedicating national TV time to it, having "official" judges and all - we are saying that this pageant is important and somehow quantifiable in our society. Repercussions to the rest of society? All that money, time, and energy that could have helped *truely* needy people are wasted.

Put another way - if we (society) are to make a serious and concerted effort to judge the people that make up our society, then shouldn't we judge those people in a manner that identifies them in how best to suit that society? We identify people that we want to TAKE OUT (or warn to modify their behavior) of society - i.e. the legal system. Why would we identify people that are "winners" when they do not contribute to our society? Even harm it?

Being a devil's advocate is good! I love that you can and want to elicit debate, and that you are trying to identify higher principles at work here. Shows a working mind.