Friday, June 8, 2007

I don’t have a huge problem with beauty pageants...

...Oh sure, they’re tacky and sexist but they’re also fascinating to watch and, personally, I figure that anyone who wants to bare the lower half of her buttocks in a risque swimsuit should be able to do so.

But the Miss Earth pageant rubs me the wrong way. In theory it’s nice to have a beauty pageant that combines jail-bait beauties with environmental issues. How can anything that raises awareness of this sort of thing be bad, right?

Well it’s phrases like this, from the official Miss Earth website that grind my gears:

“If you want to be a contestant and you do not have much knowledge of the
environment then we suggest that you read the environmental articles in
newspapers and that you google phrases such as ‘global warming’, ‘climate
change’ and ‘saving energy’.”
Riiight. So it’s not so much about recruiting passionate environmentalists who happen to look nice in a hideous sequined evening dress and be prepared to answer humiliatingly patronising questions - it’s about dressing up a pageant that is just as tacky as all the others with the trappings of environmentalism.

Oh and the pic is a Polish contestant from last year’s competition. Just be grateful I didn’t use the one of an Aussie contestants, greased up and crawling on all fours in a bikini towards the camera. I’m sure Tim Flannery and Peter Garrett have done the same thing many a time.

1 comment:

Lindsay said...

I'm holding out for the Miss Make Poverty History pageant.