Beauty pageants are competition comprising nationals or contestants from different countries. Miss World, Miss Universe, Miss America are few examples of beauty pageants. The contestants participate in the competition and stage their talents in front of audience and judges, who grades all participants and choose a winner. Women beauty pageants became popular in the 20th century and today, men pageants are not uncommon. A traditional type included intelligence and beauty of a woman and considered housewife a center figure and perfect for the title. Today, the content has changed and organizers focus more on the beauty, sexuality, and body type of contestants rather than their knowledge about world and life.
Negative effects of beauty pageants:
The beauty pageants impact the mental and physical health of participants in particular and the general population at large.
Limit confidence
Every contestant participates in a beauty pageant to win, solely because they believe themselves perfect for the title. To achieve the first position, participants work hard and perform every round including modelling, dancing, singing, or answering judges question, with dedication. Contestants lose their confidence after losing the title and feel worthless. They develop low self-esteem, which impacts their decision making and optimistic vision toward life.
Health issues
Recent reports concluded that beauty pageant contestants usually suffer from eating disorder. The participants (or common persons who want to contest) have developed an unhealthy pattern of eating due to the change in the definition of ‘Miss or Mr’. While men work hard in keeping their physique manly enough, women employ harmful eating patterns to slim their bodies and surgeries for perfection. Such lifestyle leads to eating disorder including bulimia.
Psychological impact
Beauty pageants impact the mental health of participants and the general population (audience) to a great extent. Today, every such pageant revolves around beauty and body. The teenagers and young adults who watch these competitions on television or internet start to consider beauty and perfect body extremely crucial. They spend more time and money on cosmetics and exercising rather than developing their intelligence and knowledge. In addition, the participants of the competition begin an unhealthy habit of keeping themselves beautiful and fine figure. Extreme sexuality in the competition encourages them to reform their beliefs of keeping bodies covered and promote the same to the audience.
Chemicals exposure
Today, make-up is an important ingredient to make a beauty pageant a great success and also, to win the title. In the race of looking more beautiful than the next person, people forget the side-effects of using excessive chemicals on their face. With enhanced exposure to cosmetics, a person loses the natural beauty and glow. The skin starts to lose its stiffness and wrinkles appear at an early age. Make-up usage also has a psychological impact, as a person stops going out without make-up and believes that it is necessary to look beautiful.
Misdirect childhood
The criticism on beauty pageants reached its height following the broadcasting of child beauty pageant. In one such pageant, the children were wearing exposed clothing, heavy make-up, fake teeth and hair along with sexuality in their facial expressions and walking style. Such videos only show the greediness of parents to win the prize money because children of age six to ten hardly have any meaningful idea of their actions. These children grow up thinking that staying beautiful and having a body style is the need of life. This leads to their indulgence in related practices at an early age. And the time they should have spent in playing and learning, they spend on clothing, hairstyles, and ‘selfies’.
Beauty pageants increase confidence and communication skills among the participants. It is a competition that boosts contestants to express themselves through talent or opinion. But its popularity has extended the greediness among the organizers who want to earn huge amount by making the pageant more glamorous. Many countries (mainly West Asia) have criticized the skin exposure (bikini round) in big titles such as Miss Universe or Miss World, as it hurts their beliefs. As the impact of beauty pageants do not stay limited to contestants but reaches masses, the world community must intervene in approving the content and pattern of these competitions and make intelligence and morals a foremost element. Child beauty pageants should stay banned forever. And finally, a person should never disregard his/her beliefs and values and stay stick to them in every aspect of life.