Foreign women need no show to celebrate their grace
- Source: Global Times
- [22:15 March 16 2010]
- Comments
By William Daniel Garst
China's lightning fast pace of social change can be charted in many ways, but one of the most striking is the emergence of beauty pageants over the past decade.
As recently as the 1990s, pageants were denounced as "Western cultural nonsense." However, in 2003 and 2007 China hosted the Miss World Pageant; Zhang Zilin won the 2007 competition, becoming the first Chinese Miss World.
With the 2010 Miss Laowai China pageant, the beauty pageant craze has spread to the Middle Kingdom's expatriate community. The pageant's organizers say it will promote cultural exchange, enhance opportunities for foreign women, and raise awareness about breast cancer.
Unlike many feminists, I do not think admiring a woman's physical characteristics necessarily "objectifies" her. For women to admire a handsome man and for men to be in awe of female beauty is just human nature.
Indeed, judging from the comments of my female friends, many women routinely use physical appearance as a criteria to judge each other.
However, a beauty pageant is problematic because it involves ranking contestants, all of whom are usually gorgeous, in terms of their "beauty," which is very much a subjective matter where tastes have varied in different historical contexts.
In the Tang Dynasty (618-907), plump women were considered beautiful, and three out of four of the "Great Beauties of China" wouldn't look out of place in a Dunkin' Donuts.
This issue is even trickier in a contest like the Miss Laowai China pageant, whose contestants are drawn from all over the world. Here again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. While many Western men consider darker skinned Asian and Latin women to be uniquely sensual, a Chinese friend (a woman) once told me that people here believe fair skin is always beautiful: "White skin hides a hundred flaws."
Of course the Miss Laowai China pageant's organizers claim they seek "not only to showcase their beauty but most importantly their culture, talent, and creativity."
And to their credit, they have omitted the usual beauty pageant swimsuit competition. There is a gown contest, and in the interests of cross-cultural exchange, I suggest the contestants wear Qipao!
However, participants have a maximum of four minutes to showcase their Chinese cultural talents, will undergo a two minute question and answer session, and perform something from their own country's culture.
Does anyone really believe that these snippets provide judges with a good basis for assessing contestants' intellectual talents, particularly when they will be from all over the map, making judging them akin to comparing apples and oranges?
The beauty pageant organizers also claim that they seek to give an "opportunity to all those who missed a chance of being prom queens, beauty queens and top models … or even a shot in the entertainment business."
A reality check is in order here: Most expatriate women in China are very smart, highly educated, professionals.
These women are in China to further their careers and broaden their horizons. Many of them probably never sought to be beauty queens or contemplated a showbiz career. And even those who missed such chances probably now don't regret that in the slightest.
Finally, the pageant is being touted as a way of raising awareness about China's soaring rates of breast cancer. According to Msafiri Sinkala, operations director for the pageant, participants will spread information regarding disease prevention throughout Beijing.
This is certainly laudable and I'm sure the contestants will work hard in doing this. But it would surely be better to have breast cancer survivors act as spokeswomen, not beauty pageant contestants. In the US, for example, the courage shown by the young, lovely and funny actress from the ABC comedy Samantha Who?, Christina Applegate, in the face of a double mastectomy has been immensely helpful to other breast cancer victims.
One of the many plusses of being in Beijing is its expatriate women. While many are certainly physically attractive, it's their inner grace and intelligence that sets them apart from their counterparts back home.
Let's by all means celebrate that beauty, but do it in ways other than staging yet another beauty pageant.
The author is a Beijing-based corporate trainer and freelance writer from the US. bushexpat@yahoo.com
