As a journalist I have found myself in some surreal situations. Chasing a black 100kg pig in a Sydney kindergarten where it had appeared out of nowhere. Watching a 14-year-old boy not old enough to have his license demolish a stack of cars in his “monster truck”. But the strangest situation I have ever found myself in was the crowning gala of the Miss Universe Australia.
I went to my first beauty pageant at seven, when my ballet class was asked to present flowers to finalists of the Miss Sabah competition. I was entranced by these women who were so beautiful and grown-up waving and smiling in their glittery evening gowns.
In years to come my parents let me stay up late to watch Miss Universe and Miss World. You could say I was a beauty pageant veteran, if only by virtue of watching them.
But there I was on Wednesday night at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, in a purple dress I had thought was too short, but which judging by the tiny black dresses other women had squeezed into, was actually waaay too long, and I was puzzled. And it wasn’t the distracting male hosts in tight white T-shirts whose function seemed purely to look good.
The show started with 2008 Australian Idol finalist Mark Spano singing Sex on Fire while the women did a little parade on stage. That I understood. Mark Spano was giving a performance.
Then the women introduced themselves one by one, following a set formula. “Good evening, my name’s Rachael/ Sarah/ Hiranthi and I’m a business student/ cheerleader/ international flight attendant on a private jet.” (This last one got a few giggles from my fellow journos.) This too, I understood. The women were letting us know who they were. Wisely, even though they were all 24 and under, they didn’t mention their ages. Twenty-four is like 40 in model years.
But when the women stripped down to – it has to be said – gorgeous bikinis that conjured up thoughts of sun and surf, I was baffled. I kept peering to the back of the stage waiting for something or someone else to appear. And I felt uncomfortable – there’s no other word for it – while they twisted and twirled and winked and waved, another reason why I did keep looking to the back of the stage. I felt odd staring at them.
And then I figured it out. It wasn’t like there was something else that we were meant to be looking at. Unlike a fashion show or even a talent contest, where funky clothes or hip-hop dance moves might be on display, the beauty of these women was the thing that was being judged.
This might seem an obvious point but the judges did well to choose 20-year-old Rachael Finch from Townsville, Queensland. After she was crowned with the $25,000 white gold, diamond-encrusted tiara, the mere mortals, us media, were shuffled into a tiny room and waited for Finch, like waiting for royalty. When she did appear in a gold dress she did seem to float and ascend the small stage, like a queen about to address her people. But when she opened her mouth any snide thoughts the media might have been harbouring about dumb beauty queens were quickly quashed.
Not only was Finch smart, she was well spoken and articulate, expressing disappointment at her answer to the question “What’s the biggest problem facing Australia?” in the interview section and wishing instead that she could have gotten a question about, oh I don’t know, the economy. Yet she also proved herself to be funny when a young male journalist asked her, “So what do you think of the economy?” and she joked, “How did I know that would be the next question?” prompting laughter. And when she invited her teary mum up on stage, there were some audible, “Aws” as she thanked her for always believing in her.
Beautiful, smart and kind, you could see the headlines the next day. And it seemed this magical combination made the journalists tongue-tied, or at least, not up to their usual hard line of interrogation. There were no questions about whether she thinks beauty pageants are demeaning and whether the women are too skinny and a bad example to young girls. Instead an older female journalist asked her about her hobbies (barefoot water skiing and cooking, “from sushi to soups to salads”).
But let’s not forget that beauty pageants are about judging beauty. Finch may be smart but she certainly wouldn’t be there if she wasn’t stunning to look at.
And while some critics of pageants may find it abhorrent that a bunch of skimpily clad women parade around on a stage in heels they can barely walk in (“That one girl could be picked from the rest like a prize cow, a slave, or a coveted piece of candy,” Armando Riverol wrote in the 1992 book Live from Atlantic City: A History of the Miss America Pageant), the truth is, it happens all the time.
It doesn’t necessarily take place on a stage, as it did when frumpy, middle-aged Susan Boyle attracted the ridicule of not only the judges but also of the audience on Britain’s Got Talent. It doesn’t have to. Every day women are judged for their beauty, not only by men but also by other women.
It can be as casual as an off-hand remark about why on earth Hugh Jackman would be with Deborah-Lee Furness, the implication being of course that even though Furness is an accomplished actress and director, she isn’t really good-looking enough to be with the man who was voted People magazine’s sexiest man alive of 2008.
It’s an oft-repeated example but why is that on television news, a male anchor can be ugly and sprouting grey hairs from a bulbous nose, while a female news anchor not only has to be young but very easy on the eye? As Naomi Wolf writes in her 1990 polemic The Beauty Myth, “To find out what is going on in the world always involves the reminder to women that this is going on in the world.”
And it wasn’t only the finalists at the Miss Universe Australia gala who were being judged. Those women in the tiny black dresses? Not only were they checking out the competition on stage, they were also eyeing up any other woman who walked by, coolly appraising from the high heels right up to the face.
Even if someone had asked Rachael Finch whether she thinks beauty pageants are demeaning, her answer wouldn’t have mattered (in any case, she clearly doesn’t). Finch and the other finalists know they are beautiful and know that being beautiful can be the difference between being shown the door or getting that dream job in television presenting.
Like it or not, beauty smoothes the way, opens doors. But until we start to challenge notions of beauty (of the 32 finalists only a handful were “ethnic” and the top five were all noticeably blonde and brunette – in other words, white) beauty pageants and all they imply are here to stay.