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There is no one way of judging ‘beauty’ in the same way that there is no one way of judging what is “national” — they are inherently variable concepts.
Written by Anuradha Vellat Updated: January 17, 2023 12:21 IST
Divita Rai in the 'Sone ki Chidiya' lehenga for the National Costume round of the Miss Universe 2022 ceremony. (Instagram: Divita Rai)
Earlier this week, India’s Miss Universe contestant, Divita Rai, turned up dressed as “Sone ki Chidiya” or the “Golden Bird” during the national costume round of the Miss Universe 2023 pageant. In the same pageant, participants from over 80 countries also turned up in costumes that were carefully curated, bespoke outfits which best represented their “nation”. The golden bird was the India of ancient times – the land of everything from salt to gold. The country since has been colonised, looted, democratised and polarised, in no particular order.
An important question here is: Which era of the nation deserves representation? Rai choosing the “Sone ki Chidiya” costume, we hope, was ironic. Or maybe the choice was about the metaphorical gold — the people and the culture of India. It is no secret just how giving we are as a nation to those less fortunate. Just the other day, while taking the Delhi Metro, I saw two people clicking selfies after stepping onto the tracks. A self-deputed bodyguard took it upon himself to drag the two men out of there and in fact, slap them hard. The idea was that they were clearly poor and possibly uneducated. And that is how we deal with our uneducated: We teach them a lesson. A golden lesson.
Another national costume, donned by Miss Ukraine Viktoria Apanasenko, was the “Warrior of Light”, meant to represent the war-torn country’s courage against the Russian invasion. Reducing the country and its people to its current tragedy, the costume bypasses many histories and cultures to exhibit the convenient choice of a white country undergoing war. The internet jumped to laud Apasasenko’s courage but the question needs to be asked – do all war-torn nations or ones undergoing severe socio-political crises render the same reaction? The answer is no.
This is not to personally attack Rai, or any of the contestants, as the pressures of the pageant are such that it needs to appear, at best, a CSR project on part of the contestants as well as the organisers. The problem lies in naturalising such rounds in global competitions, where the need to unify everything takes precedence over allowing space for anomalies to exist. In the present case, it becomes a false case of positive affirmation, that engenders a sense of toxic positivity, which is what the pageant essentially demands. Even if one were to “represent” a social cause, the idea of which in itself is ridiculous, how does one do that without being reductive on a platform that judges beauty by archaic standards? How is that not a travesty?
In the past century, many important conversations surrounding ideas of beauty have come up — periodically questioning its standards and aesthetics and how it often is deeply problematic to put one kind of beauty on a pedestal. In the same way, there have been conversations about appropriating cultures, often one’s own. The pageant, somehow, continues to miss both conversations.
There is no way of judging beauty in the same way that there is no way of judging what is “national”. The moment something becomes national, it also becomes representative of a large group of people defined by the borders they live within. In the same way, that beauty becomes objectified when put on a proscenium, what it represents also meets a similar fate. If we are going to go the “women’s empowerment” way to justify beauty pageants, the least we can do is curate it better and not be oblivious to the realities of representation.
We have come far enough in the 21st century to know and understand why beauty pageants are harmful. However, along with unrealistic beauty standards, pageants also project nations as communities with uniform histories, only faced with a mildly discomforting problem every now and then, nothing that wouldn’t possibly go away once the contestant wins the crown.
It is time that beauty pageant organisers take cognisance of this. Beauty pageants need to include better rounds, ask better questions and, moreover, allow that space to truly empower the many genders that exist. Even as a CSR project, here is hoping that in the coming years, pageants will deal with a little more inclusivity and a little less appropriation.
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