Maybe it's the snob in me (who I didn't even know existed, incidentally), but I personally feel slighted by the sudden boom in beauty queens who graduated from my old alma mater, UP Diliman. It's funny how, when a law school classmate of mine joined the BB. Pilipinas contest in 2001 and won, I was one of those cheering her on, but after seeing several more of them join, and seeing two them win in as many years, I find myself bothered.
The latest winner, Lia Ramos, who happened to finish the same undergraduate course as I did (Political Science) recently defended beauty pageants, saying that they aren't exploitative. While I'll leave it to Gabriela and similarly oriented groups to debate that point, my concern is a tad different. I can't help but feel that beauty pageants, in their own way, keep us in the dark ages when it comes to appreciating true beauty.
Thanks to instantaneous communications technology, we find ourselves bombarded with more and more sensory stimulants by the day, and as a result, appearances seem to matter more than anything. Individuality remains a subversive concept, which has even been hijacked by these asshole clothing companies that purport to sell it on their racks.
In this day and age of bulimia and insecurity, it is important that people should be reminded that looks aren't an all important thing. To my mind, there is no one better to lead this charge than those more enlightened among us, namely the intelligensia (if I've misspelled this, someone please tell me). In my honest opinion, UP grads should be at the forefront of such a group.
It strikes me as a tad off, therefore, that UP grads (among them a lawyer and a poli sci grad, for Pete's sake) seem to tackle things from a completely different direction! Instead of distinguishing themselves in their field by championing environmental causes or something truly significant like that, they're joining contests that before anything else place emphasis on physical beauty! They explain that this is a way to put themselves on the map and therefore get people's attention so that they can share whatever advocacy it is they want to push. And then there's all that self-confidence stuff.
Well, I can't help but feel that there are plenty of other ways by which such obviously intelligent people can make an impact in society, particularly when they are of such phenomenal academic pedigree and are drop-dead gorgeous to boot. They don't really have to try to so hard to work within the system because the system is already skewed in their favor. Beauty and brains, sad to say, trumps plain old brains, really. So why bother putting even more premium on appearance by joining these contests? It's starting to get annoying.
Well, maybe it's just the snob in me. It only started bothering me, after all, when UP grads started figuring so prominently in these things.
1 comment:
Hmmm.. just an opinion.. maybe you've been bothered like that 'coz a number of UP grads have been crowned in several beauty pageants recently. In fact, many UP grads had been joining these contests. If I'm not mistaken, a summa cum laude grad of Bio in Diliman competed for Bb. Pilipinas sometime in the 80s. i have a different conclusion though... I guess UP is beginning to produce female grads who don't only have the smarts, but beauty also.
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