Rashi OswalMajority of the people in society believes women are supposed to be beautiful and when we think of the name pageant maximum of us think of beautiful women, I believe is the tag pageant is way ahead and above from the gender of that person, In the majority of places pageants are judged by on the characteristics of their gender, female contestant are judged by their fashion and poise and on the other side men contestants are judged by characteristics like masculinity. The patriarchy practiced in the society has tender masculinity towards the male sex and femininity towards the female sex even though they are detached.
“Male pageants”- not a very common use term but it does exist in the world and represent a naturalistic description, and these events are coequal to the female pageant and a platform for huge business, A lot of countries these days have started with Male pageant events and very few people know about this and role of the male in such events, Considering this issue, initially we should derive the meaning of pageant and how both the pageant male and female pageant differ from each other, These days men pageant are quite into the market but they usually target towards bodybuilding which has again lead to stereotypical roles of gender in this industry, I kind of hype a female pageant gets it not similar to what a male pageant gets, In fact you rarely hear a boy saying he wants to be Mister Something, but for girls that are a quite common dream.[1]
Men’s beauty pageants are very new, they started in the year in 1996 In 1997 Lupita Jones, Miss Universe 1991, started in México a men’s beauty contest named El Modelo de México, the question which comes to the question here is what took so long for it come , the answer is pretty clear the stereotypical thought process set by the peer of associating the factor of the pageant with beauty and female. The idealistic image of woman is also in question to the woman who doesn’t fit in the idealistic feature of being a woman ,In a very recent scenario Miss Nevada a participant of Miss America was made to live in a room alone and made to go through health check-ups to prove that she was a woman I had that purpose, and I had that dream. I wanted to achieve it and, for me, the purpose of representing people and representing not just myself but something that is not always represented in our communities and in this time, especially in media,” she said.[2]
There do exist bodybuilding contests for women but due to muscular bodies they are considered as not attractive or feminine, Considering the muscular body as a feature of masculinity, Resulting in women backing up from such events and avoiding being associated with weights and having a muscular body structure for that matter Precilla Choi indicated in her publication of Muscle matters: maintaining visible differences between women and men that female bodybuilder must differentiate from the men bodybuilder with the use of makeup, no facial hair, not too muscular and have sex appeal. In another word, the female bodybuilder is judged on their femininity[3].
It is one thing in having events or contests where the participants show off or flex about their muscular body but rather conducting events where the contestants are judged on basis of their intelligence is a challenge, there is nothing wrong with conducting such events but they become more of the sporting event rather than a pageant, The change we need as a society is to bring change about considering the looks alone and judging based on the appearance they should be more of contest where people are judged on their personality and witty answers, A lot of men participating in such contest are great looking, skill-full, witty judging them on the basis of their body or muscular body wouldn’t be a fair thing.
Let it be male or a female beauty pageant judgement made in such contest should not just stick to stereotypical naturalistic description of the gender and should be what the person is and more than just the facial or the physical appearance.
In the end if we look at it there is no such difference in male and female pageant it is how we look at it and make out mind flexible and accepting the changing nature of society. These contests are fun contest but we should also value them for what they actually are.
References:
[1] https://attireclub.org/2014/10/06/male-pageants-different-from-womens/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_pageant
[3] https://rampages.us/nguyenmn5/2015/10/19/beauty-pageants-masculinity-vs-femininity/
P.S: The views expressed in the column are of the author.
