Social and Economic Implications of Beauty Pageants

So Manushi Chhillar has won the beauty crown, and you have begun jumping with boundless joy. Chhillar stated that a mother deserves the value of her motherhood and maternal love in the form of a salary, and you found this to be a wonderful sentiment. By God, salute to your cuteness.

Now take a look at the events of the last fifteen days. Moody's (not Tom Moody) upgrades India's rating from Baa3 to Baa2. India enters the top hundred countries in the Ease of Doing Business rankings, and right at that moment, Chhillar becomes Miss World.

Many years ago, Indian beauty queen Indrani Rahman refused to wear a swimsuit during the Miss World pageant. As a result, Indrani Rahman was eliminated from the Miss World competition.

In our culture, a deep sense of sanctity is linked with aesthetic perception. Be it the sculpture of the Didarganj Yakshi (*yakshi*: sculpted female figure) or the portrait of the Mona Lisa's smile, both represent the highest standards of female beauty. The standards of beauty are bound to sanctity, not to competition.

Humanity's primordial *chitta* (mind-stuff) does not discriminate. It draws no dividing line between ugliness and beauty. But what modern human consciousness calls ugly, the primordial *chitta* loved as well. Today, by drawing a dividing line, we have committed a monumental blunder due to which we are unable to love the ugly because it is not beautiful; on the other hand, what we consider beautiful ceases to be beautiful two days later. Upon acquaintance, the moment familiarity sets in, that unfamiliar essence of beauty is lost. That unfamiliar attraction or invitation of beauty dissolves. To prevent this beauty from dissolving, we introduced makeup. Makeup and the entire concept of makeup is fundamentally hypocrisy, because natural beauty needs no contrivance. Yet, two of the world's largest multinational makeup-manufacturing companies—'Unilever' and 'Revlon/Procter & Gamble'—organize these global celebrations of beauty called 'Miss Universe' and 'Miss World'. There is a need to understand the politics behind these competitions.

Take a look at a sequence of events

1) Immediately after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a girl from Russia was conferred the Miss World title.

2) In 1992-93, when Jamaica announced economic liberalization, Jamaica's Limahana was declared Miss World in that very year.

3) Along with granting trade concessions to multinational companies, Venezuela has received more than thirty titles of 'Miss World', 'Miss Universe', and 'Miss Photogenic' from 1970 to the present day.

4) Following South Africa's independence, as a reward for President Nelson Mandela's invitation to multinational corporations, Basetsana Julia was made 'Miss World Runner-up'.

5) Under the directives of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, girls from Croatia and Zimbabwe—nations undergoing structural adjustment programs—were also given fourth and fifth places in these global beauty pageants.

6) In 1966, when Indira Gandhi devalued the rupee by 33 percent, India's Reita Faria became Miss World in that exact year.

7) As a result of the structural adjustment programs being carried out towards liberalization and globalization by Manmohan Singh, 27 years later India logged both 'Miss Universe' and 'Miss World' titles to its account. Still, in '97, Moradabad's Diana Hayden became entitled to the 'Miss World' crown.

8) Cosmetic companies like 'Revlon', 'Lakmé', and 'Unilever' keep the winners under a special kind of control for a full year. Where will they go? What will they say? What will they wear? Everything for an entire year is decided by these sponsoring companies.

9) In 1966, India's Reita Faria, who won the Miss World title, was sent to Vietnam during the US-Vietnam War by the sponsoring company to entertain American soldiers.

10) These companies understand very well that a married woman's beauty is not fit to be served; hence, there is a strict embargo on winners prohibiting them from marrying for an entire year.

The economics of beauty, where the female body willingly readies itself to become a product, has expanded from these global pageants into the streets, neighborhoods, cities, schools, and universities of our country.

In this era of globalization and materialism, a woman's body becoming a product or an advertisement is an extension of that mindset in which a woman is searching for a market for herself. She seeks to carve a place for herself in a distorted market by any means necessary. She does not know the 'opportunity cost' of making her place. She says she is not getting the time to determine what all she is acquiring, and at what costs.

She accepts the screening of 'Fire' as an expansion of her suppressed desires—before which first love was restricted, then after marriage love was taboo, and now there is a special and open acceptance of the fashion of 'instant love'.

To the West, aberrations alone seem pleasurable because the beauty of life is unfamiliar to them. India's identity and dignity persisted because we developed the complete science of inner beauty and purity.

Our beauty is *Satyam-Shivam-Sundaram* (Truth-Goodness-Beauty). Our *Satyam* is experience, *Shivam* is action—that action which emerges from this experience—and *Sundaram* is the blossoming of consciousness in an individual who has experienced the truth. Economic theories of demand and supply determine the value of goods/products in a market economy. The display of the female body and the expansion of the supply of its availability stands on that 'edge' of valuelessness where there is a serious threat of demand becoming secondary. As a result, not only are the highest standards of female beauty crumbling, but the rift in the relationship between beauty and sanctity is also widening.

How are Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen, Lara Dutta, Priyanka Chopra, and Diana Hayden made?

Almost every major beauty contest includes a swimsuit or bikini round, and the clothes worn in this round are quite short. For models participating in this round, the biggest concern is that if their clothes shift even slightly during the presentation, it could lead to a deeply humiliating situation; to avoid this very situation, models use butt glue. Butt glue is a type of gum that has a very strong grip, and because of this, models prevent their clothes from slipping or shifting during the bikini round.

It is a dangerous truth that all models participating in beauty contests want to project themselves aggressively, and for this desire, they rapidly lose weight. But now, instead of slim beauty, this matter has reached underweight beauty.
Underweight means dangerous for health—that is, your weight is far lower than what it should be according to your height, which is extremely dangerous for health. In the 1930s era, the average BMI in America was 20.8, which globally falls in the healthy range; whereas in 2010, the average BMI of girls participating in beauty contests in America was 16.9. This is considered underweight.

Earlier, beauty was considered an innate quality, but now the growing trend of beauty contests has turned it into an expensive affair because today one cannot become a beauty queen on a small budget. In reality, lakhs of rupees are spent on the makeup of models in beauty contests, including dresses, makeup, hair stylists, personal trainers, coaches, transportation, and entry fees for participating in the beauty contest, etc., the cost of which adds up to lakhs of rupees. Generally, this expense varies according to the level of the beauty contest and the country.

Beauty contests, although a product of the modern era, have many rules that themselves reflect outdated thinking and regressive ideas, such as the requirement that any model participating in a beauty contest must be unmarried. Along with this, it is also necessary that she has not given birth to a child. Apart from this, entry into most competitions with the 'Miss' title in beauty pageants is granted only up to 25-26 years of age.

Be ready: collarbones protruding outwards, new shops for liposuction and cosmetic surgery, displays of exposed bodies under the guise of modeling, infertility, suicides, and young men and women surrounded by mental depression are waiting for you.

- Dr. Madhusudan Upadhyay, the author is a deep scholar of Indian culture, history, art, dharma (righteous duty) and adhyatma (spirituality).

Read this as well,

Forgive me, your cinematic dance is not art, but blackness