Pageants

What I don’t like about pageants nowadays is that it’s just disingenuous. It’s still in large part a beauty contest but they add these other elements to legitimize it as being less objectifying and superficial than that. Please. Newsflash – the swimsuit portion isn’t about judging poise and confidence. It’s about judging the way the women look in tight skimpy things. Just be honest about what it is, is all I’m saying. Yeah, I know this year some law student won. But whatever, all I know is there’s still a swimsuit competition, and there’s a reason for that.

I just think the disingenuity is worse than objectifying. I don’t see what the big deal is about objectifying. It’s unfortunate I guess but everyone does it all the time. Like making judgments on people based on their height. Or other random things. People get rewarded based on their looks all the time. Models get rewarded with magazine covers based almost solely on their looks. People aren’t outraged about it – they’re happy. They want to see good looking people on magazines. Especially women. So what’s the big deal with a beauty pageant that does the same? That’s life.

I dunno, I read this fascinating book review recently (pretty sad, huh? I don’t read books anymore, just book reviews) about beauty, maybe it was about aestheticism. Aestheticism is actually fascinating if you learn about it. But anyway. The interesting thing about the book is that it pointed out how beauty is valued in so many different things, maybe everything. Like the stuff above. But even in science. Scientists see and value beauty in the natural world, it’s a common thing. And people value beauty even in things as abstract as math. It’s just called something different, like when a proof or algorithm is praised for being “elegant”. Many times, this is strictly an aesthetic value judgment, which is essentially what beauty is. Not sure if you agree but I thought it was insightful, that we value beauty in just about everything.

And it’s in Christianity also. I dunno, there are just songs out there about how Jesus is beautiful and the beauty of the Lord. Not sure how theologically correct that is but it’s there. We value beauty. I just think it’s interesting to recognize that.