Judging Beauty

I listen to the radio on my way to work in the mornings and for the last couple of days, Fly FM has had the Miss Universe Malaysia contestants come in during the morning show. As usual, they had interviews, blah blah blah… anyway, it got me thinking (which hasn’t happened much for the last couple of months)… why would you want total strangers, ie the judges, to decide whether you are beautiful or not?

And I’m not only talking about physical beauty here… if you don’t win the competition, then they are basically saying you are just not physically beautiful, not charming, don’t have enough poise, not intelligent, etc… etc… compared to the winner.

Why would you put yourself through that kind of torture?

To me, it’s equivalent to your kid coming home from school with his/her report card… overall they are 15th in the school out of 175 students in terms of exam results. Instead of telling your kid “good job… your efforts are really paying off”, you tell your kid “good job, but you do know that there’s 14 other kids who are smarter than you?”

Now don’t get me wrong… I’m all for competition. But most competitions are quantifiable. You keep score… and the more skill you have, the higher the score… with a beauty contest, it’s just too subjective…

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder (or beer holder, in some cases)… hence, you can’t really judge somebody’s beauty.

It has been suggested to me that I should enter my son in ‘baby contests’ when he was younger… I just couldn’t do it. I know my son is cute… heck, every parent think their kid is the cutest. But in the end, I didn’t want anybody else to say otherwise.

Now back to these beauty contest judges… it must be tough for them… they have to judge a person based on what is perceived as beautiful by society. In mainstream media, it’s believed that perfection equals beauty… but I think that’s just wrong… it’s the imperfections that make people uniquely beautiful.

If you were to walk down a busy street, you would see a lot of people who, to you, are not beautiful at all… but they ALL have somebody who thinks they are beautiful and love them for who they are. It may be their parents, their partner, spouse, children, friends, etc… in other words, who are you to judge.

I guess I’m not a fan of beauty contests… but then again, maybe I’m just jealous that the DJs got to hang out with those beauty queens…