Local perceptions towards beauty pageants

Our country seems to place little emphasis on international beauty pageants, other than selecting and sending the local winners to them. Ms Singapore Universe 2007 revealed that she had no wardrobe sponsors provided for her as she prepared to leave for Mexico. This probably affected her full focus on the competition per se, as she had to look for her own and even pay for some of her own accessories. On the contrary, other Asian countries like Japan and India employ professionals to prepare their local winners for the international platforms.

To be objective, it is understandable why little emphasis is placed on them. They place more importance on external beauty and the only exceptions are personality, confidence and eloquence, which are hidden beneath the surface. It is no wonder that the public, including I, sees them as frivolous.

Venezuela is famous for preparing its girls to become future beauty queens. There is a beauty boot camp where the selected girls are taught how to speak properly and do well in interviews, amongst other areas. Singapore definitely needs this faculty with regards to the latest beauty queen in the news. The camp gets back 20% of the winners' earnings in exchange for being in charge of their expenses. It sounds like a fair deal. Maybe Singapore should consider it?

However, girls from Venezuela are so obsessed with doing well in international pageants that they resort to plastic surgery to increase their chances. They become more beautiful, yes, but their beauty has as a result become more artificial and not completely natural, which had already been "artificialized" through makeup and undergarments. Their beauty has become fake and unreal, as surgery has tainted their natural physicality in the name of making right the distortions on their body.

At the same time, the founder of a grooming and modelling school claims that his/her school is preparing the students for life. What will last through life is a person's character and not external skills, which the school is honing. An irony!