Beauty Pageants and Toilet Seats
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 ( Read more... )
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.
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