3. Do you think these are good arguments? Are any issues or ideas missing? If you had been in the conversation, what would you have added? Each year, more than 2 billion people worldwide participate in and watch beauty contests. In fact, beyond the many local and regional contests, there are more than fifty world beauty pageants held annually.1 Although Miss America, among other pageants, has experienced declining audiences over the last thirty years, some pageants, such as Miss World, continue to attract global attention and viewers. Additionally, youth pageants and television programs such as Toddlers and Tiaras attract large audiences. Yet, despite their popularity, questions persist about whether they harm girls and women. The following discussion between two students addresses some of these concerns:2 Kaidren: Beauty contests undermine women as people. They promote an ideal of female beauty that is unrealistic, and very very few women can achieve it. Yet, this ideal pressures all women to conform to it. This is harmful because it encourages women to diet excessively, contributes to eating disorders, and encourages risky cosmetic surgery. But the “beauty myth” is so powerful that women willingly risk their health and even their lives to achieve what these contests promote.

Ramona: Wait a minute. This argument makes it sound as though women are easily brainwashed and can’t figure out fact from fiction. There is nothing wrong with watching and admiring people who are fit, well proportioned, and healthy—in fact, these kinds of messages are especially important when you consider the obesity epidemic.

We should strive for fitness. Anyway, both women and men enjoy beauty pageants;

more women watch them than men. Women freely choose to enter them. No one is required to participate or watch—people get to make choices. Pageants haven’t been forced on anyone and they don’t force anyone to make bad choices.

Kaidren: You are missing the point. Healthy lifestyles are important and we should be teaching about how to be healthy. But that is not what beauty pageants do. They single out women as different from men. Women are judged on appearance rather than any other quality. And, achieving the ideal often requires poor health habits such as extreme dieting. Judging women—not men—on their looks subjugates women because it establishes an ideal feminine form that does not include intellect or any other ability. These contests set a standard of femininity that focuses almost exclusively on outward appearance at any cost.

Ramona: What is wrong with judging people on physical appearance? We judge people on particular attributes all the time. We evaluate professors on their ability to teach, irrespective of other abilities. We judge athletes on physical abilities without any concern for their intellect or emotional balance. We judge medical doctors on their skill and not on whether they are nice people. We evaluate people all the time based on physical, mental, or emotional attributes that are appropriate for the situation. Every competition, of every kind, values certain qualities over others and that’s OK. Why would we exclude giving women recognition for outward appearance any more than we would exclude awarding a prize for best tattoo or the ability to lift weights?