Imagine a long, dark blue, satin, dress on you, the straps made out of shiny rhinestones over your silky smooth shoulders. Your feathery, smooth hair drifting onto your glowy chest. Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the world of beauty pageants. We all know what a beauty pageant is, right? The place where women, or girls, show off their exquisiteness, charm, elegance, and of course, their beauty. At some point, we’ve all wanted to be up on that stage displaying our appeal, and I’m talking about the guys here too. But lets not get too carried away with the glamour that Beauty Pageants bring with them. As we all know, the questions being asked at the pageants are not the hardest, but would the candidates agree? If you were to be asked why Americans are not able to locate countries on the map would you reply with "I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps, and I believe that our education like such as South Africa, and the Iraq, everywhere like, such as, and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., or should help South Africa, it should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for our children." Like really, would you reply like that? None other than intelligent Miss South Carolina said this. Or, when Miss Sri Lanka was asked to give her astrological sign, she replied with, "Oh, I don't have any."
Ladies and Gentleman, all I’m trying to prove to you is that in these beauty contests, you can tell that everything is superficial and the people are being judged by who they are on the outside as opposed to being judged by who they are intellectually. Knowing these facts, it is suddenly clear why anorexia rates are going up and the image of the ideal woman now would have been seen as unhealthy in an earlier time. What happened to having a positive body imagine no matter what size you were? People need to embrace who they are naturally instead of fighting to be who they see on T.V. A study of 4,294 net work television commercials revealed that 1 out of every 3.8 commercials send some sort of “attractiveness message,” telling viewers what is or is not attractive. Have you ever watched a car commercial where the driver is unnecessarily closed, and where there is more focus on the hot, sexy driver, instead of the real product being sold, they are subconsciously sending a message, basically saying, “get this car, and you’ll be hot”. Take high schools on T.V for example, the typical high school stereotypes are always revealed in the same way, you’ve got the jocks, the Asian nerds, the cheerleaders, hot babes, the pretty innocents and the somewhat attractive male teacher. I’m sure all you teens out there can fit people in your school into those categories; if that’s so, then media is in a way, right. But lets get back to the beauty pageants. The idea of having a contest where beautiful girls can show off their attractiveness is not bad, but how about picking smart AND attractive girls? After all, these beauty pageants are being shown on T.V., and the contestants are woman who littler girls look up to. I remember when I was a kid, I always used to watch the beauty pageants, and whenever I saw the contestants, I would pick the prettiest one and say “I’m that one!” But now that I’m older, beauty pageants have become a joke to me, because after all, everyone is beautiful. So why do we need a contest to prove it?