In response to a series of beauty contests being held at a local pub, the Newcastle University women's collective has begun organising protests.
The campaign was initiated with a protest against the "Miss University" contest held at the pub in late July, and has since involved protesting the weekly "Miss Indy" beauty contests being held at the same pub every Wednesday night.
In response to the protest, one woman participating in the Miss University contest confronted the protesters, saying that she chose to wear revealing clothes — "nobody was forcing [her] to".
This does raise important questions for feminists. What should the politics of protesting beauty pageants, fashion and entertainment, including pornography, industries be?
The sexism of these industries is not primarily through exploitation of the participants: it reaches much more broadly into the effect they have on societal attitudes.
This sort of protest is very different to, for example, feminist campaigns against the garment industry, which is primarily based on outworkers. The sexism here is in the extreme exploitation of women, as vulnerable workers. These workers feel the direct effects of this exploitation — in incredibly long hours and poor pay. They are under no illusions as to whether they are exploited or not.
Feminists need to act in solidarity with outworkers, seeking to raise awareness about their plight and support their campaigns for justice.
But the entertainment industry is not sexist primarily because it profits out of the exploitation of women workers. It's worst sexist effects come from the images of women that it promotes.
It is important that feminists don't fall into the trap of "blaming" the women that are involved for "not realising their own exploitation". It is more constructive to campaign against the sexist ideas about women that these contests are based upon, and help to promote.
Competitions like Miss Indy and Miss University are part of an industry based on portraying women as sexual objects, available to be "consumed" by a male customer. Women's sexuality is reduced to pleasing men. Women are portrayed as always sexually "available".
The fact that some women feel empowered by participating in the industry (and that some women can make significant money out of it) does not change this. Playing the roles assigned to women through sexism can make life easier for some women in a sexist society — particularly if they play them well — but that doesn't mean that it helps the struggle for women's liberation.
These competitions are also part of an industry that makes money out of convincing women to get ever thinner. They promote a body "ideal" that is unattainable for many women. Every day, women are bombarded with this body ideal. In magazines, on TV shows, in ads, even on the bus.
The National Eating Disorder Information Center (NEDIC) in Canada conducted a study of nine- and 10-year-old children's fears in 2000. It found that most children were more afraid of getting fat than of losing a parent, getting cancer or living through nuclear war. Fifty-one per cent of the girls in the study said they felt better about themselves if they were on a diet.
NEDIC estimates that 10% of women and girls (10 million) and 1 million men and boys in the US are struggling with eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia and binge eating. A 1995 study of college women found that 91% had attempted to control their weight through dieting and 22% dieted "often" or "always". Around US$40 billion is spent on weight loss products and programs annually in the US.
Eating disorders are endemic in a society that judges women on how they look. Beauty contests are a key reflection, and promotion, of this. This has been the main reason that feminist have opposed them.
That doesn't mean, of course, that feminist should call for such competitions to be banned, since that won't eradicate the sexist ideas thet reflect. Sexist ideas about women are based on the societal oppression of women, of which the state is a part. Objecting to sexist events is also not the same as objecting to sexually explicit entertainment — which some feminist events are.
It is far better to fight the ideas that sexist events promote through debate, argument and mobilisation for women's liberation. This may include protests outside such events.
The individual choices that women can make will be limited by a sexist society. Our aim must be to campaign against sexism in order to open up more choices for all of us.
BY MELODY COUTMAN
[The author is member of the socialist youth organisation Resistance.]
From Green Left Weekly, August 27, 2003.
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