Why the aversion to beauty contests?
In India, the hype surrounding these contests is crazy. You’d think our girls have won the Nobel Prize. And you lose sight of what’s really happening — 40,000 women died during childbirth only in Uttar Pradesh last year. Is that something anybody knows or cares about? Those lives could have been saved. One has to realise why beauty contests are held. Cosmetic product manufacturers use them to serve their vested interests. They want to capture markets. That’s why you have people from different markets winning. When the big market was Latin America, you had a Ms Venezuela winning. When India became the hotspot, an Indian won. In the West, it is no longer the hot thing so, naturally, we are the ones most eager to lap it all up. It is a planned marketing strategy. Second, it imposes a standard of beauty worldwide. That is very, very objectionable. Your own sense of aesthetics and beauty is altered by the tremendous marketing blitz these contests generate. They also have a punishing influe
