Controversy Over Beauty Pageants
* Re “The Eyes of the Beholder,” Commentary, Dec. 4:
Beauty pageants are utterly degrading and humiliating. These events objectify a woman’s body as certainly as any pornographer. I do not come by this information because I am a “man-hating feminist.” (No feminist I know hates men.) I am neither ignorant nor envious, as Susan Carpenter-McMillan would classify anyone who disagrees with her opinions.
I come by my attitudes about beauty pageants having competed in two of them in the early ‘70s. They represented an avenue a woman had for receiving a scholarship to college. These two pageants, one of which I won, remain a source of excruciating embarrassment to me. Most of my friends and colleagues have no idea that I was once a contestant in the Miss America pageant.
So let McMillan be informed, I am neither ugly nor dumb about the beauty pageant business. (It is, by the way, a highly lucrative big business.) Yes, I oppose beauty pageants. I oppose any event that objectifies a woman’s body for money. I strongly object to the idea that there is something wholesome about women competing against each other to decide which one is the “most beautiful.”
DENISE TYRRELL
Los Angeles
* Eyes can behold anything and everything, but decent human beings will not view the cruelty of boxing, dogfights, or the vulgarity of nudity. In India, and elsewhere, women are treated as goddesses and mothers, even when they are childless. Despite poverty, disease, corruption and colonialism, India preserved its tradition of respecting women’s bodies as sacred and private, not to be exhibited in public.
A beauty pageant in India, as elsewhere, is intended for big money for big corporations, and purely for commercial gain. It is a disgrace to women and obscene for men to watch. It is a shame to the organizers, who hardly care for India’s culture and heritage. Hollywood has taken over Bombay’s film industry, which is now proudly termed “Bollywood.” India has now joined with the rest of the world toward decadence and depravity. Feminists and fundamentalists will lose in this exploitation race.
Beauty and grace are a state of mind; they do not come with body. One has to cultivate them. They are priceless.
NIRODE D. MOHANTY
Huntington Beach