Not that I take these things too seriously, but with Riyo Mori, Miss Japan, winning the 2007 Miss Universe Pageant, Ningning Zhang, Miss China, winning the Miss Congeniality award, and Anna Theresa Licaros, Miss Philippines, winning the Miss Photogenic award, I started wondering about how many Asian girls really do look up to these young women as national role models.
While there are many obvious and undeniable problems with the very notion of a beauty competition (not to mention an international one), contestants in the Miss Universe pageant carry, to varying degrees, the hopes of their nations on their exposed shoulders in a similar way that Olympians carry the pressure to bring home the gold, silver, or bronze.
But with Miss USA’s monumental and well publicized beauty queen nightmare of falling on her butt in the evening gown competition, and later her hostile reception by many in the Mexico City audience, I began to question how much of all this really had do with beauty.
Questions – To what extent does national pride condition your response to current international events? Do we really need to be internationally pitted against one another in events like the Miss Universe Pageant, the Olympics, and World Championships of any kind?
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Miss Universe 2007 and national pride?
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9 comments:
The inference in your article is that national pride is not necessarily a good thing, a point which you seem to be suggesting, gives us cause to question the legitimacy of international competition. While I agree with your first point, as a former student of psychology, I can say that however unfortunate the corollaries may be, competition is hardwired into our biology and we can no more escape it, then we can sway the large numbers of people who enjoy going into nature to kill sentient creatures for sport. It could be argued that our zeal for competition, is a pro-social redirection of what otherwise could be manifest as power politics or international adventurism.
Seeing Miss USA tumble made me proud to be non-American. I agree with you. It's just a beauty pageant rife with issues, but it is broadcast internationally, and Miss USA's fall is emblematic of the fall from American grace. While it may seem like nothing, the fall in my opinion elicited, at the very least, a collective non-American giggle.
This kind of Anti-Americanism revealed by the boos of the Mexico City audience is precisely why many many Canadians (and even some Americans) sew Canadian flags on the backpacks they take with them when they travel so as to appear Canadian, and not American.
"Do we really need to be internationally pitted against one another in events like the Miss Universe Pageant, the Olympics, and World Championships of any kind?"
No. In fact, millions of people could be fed with the dirty money spent on international events like the upcoming Sudan Genocide Olympics in Beijing.
Competition may have biological roots, and at its very base, the Miss Universe pageant in all its superficiality does kind of mimic a certain simple "natural" strutting (usually by males in the non-human animal kingdom) to attract the most attention. Of course, as far as we know, the purpose of the Miss Universe pageant is not to attract mates. The competitive aspect of it, however, as shallow as it may seem, reveals how similar the pageant is to more seemingly serious pursuits like the Olympics. More importantly, both events expose how uncivilized we as humans really are.
Comparing oneself to others, whether locally or internationally in sport or in pageants will inevitably make one vain and/or bitter. There will always be greater and lesser persons than oneself. Challenging oneself, however corny or self-righteous that may sound, is substantially more entertaining and rewarding than waiving a national flag. We just have to be courageous enough to look in the mirror.
"figitout" I totally agree! Constructing one's identity by comparing oneself to other nations is so wrong and superficial. Watching people on sports channels talk about how the Russians are great in so and so sport and how the Americans need work in such and such an area just drives me mad, because it paints a picture of athletes somehow representing an entire population. Just think of the violence at soccer matches as the extreme of this kind of outlook. And the fact that there are cheerleaders in American football egging us on just seems barbaric. It makes me scratch my head and say, "No wonder we have wars." Sure, sport keeps us healthy, but we have got to learn to balance individual self-development with collective peace, and I think we are so far away from achieving this equilibrium.
As an American of Asian descent, I don't think that the winners of said contests are necessarily followed by droves of fangirls in their respective countries. The notion of Miss Universe itself, as well as Miss America within the United States, has been slowly eroding anyway. However, I do believe that Miss Japan's Riyo Mori winning Miss Universe 2007 (and being the first Asian woman to do so in the contest) does inspire a greater sense of confidence all types of people are beautiful.
Actually, several Asian women have already won the Miss Universe pageant.
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