Miss World 2008
So, congratulations are in order for Miss Venezuela who yesterday won Miss World 2011. Outside women held up placards with ‘Miss Ogynist’ and ‘Sexism is pretty ugly’ in protest against the Miss World contest. Curiously reported numbers of protesters vary, The Guardian say 50, The Telegraph says 200. But the point is Feminism is not dead, just not as au fait with social networking as it could be to organise such things.
In the 1970s when Miss World was last held in London feminists coalesced as The Angry Brigade, protested outside and infiltrated The Albert Hall where the competition was held. What’s happened since then? The word feminism has become the new F-word. Young women choose not to identify with women’s lib or appreciate the history of it. The meaning of Naomi Wolf’s Beauty Myth line of reasoning that a woman are entitled to wear cowboy boots to their revolution been bastardised. Now women should wear a heeled cowboy boots down the street, accept instead of feel intimidated by wolf whistles and be ‘empowered’ by the attention.
Women, every time you use the word ‘empowered’ when referring to lipstick or spanx, I think a fairy dies or something. Girl Power, lad mags and alt beauty are their own Miss World contests in microcosm. It is the infiltration that gets to me, people think it’s so easy to flip something like Miss World on its head and make a comment. Unfortunately it turns out the comment is; tattooed or decked out in peach satin unless you’re slim, young and pretty you’re not winning anything. Please keep talking to a minimum.
Andrew Logan, who I met with Zandra Rhodes at a garden party once, well I breathed their second hand air, started Miss Alternative World 40 years ago. It is unrehearsed and features Logan in half drag as host. The contestants all look like Leigh Bowery willed them into existence. So far this is the only contest I can find produced to poke fun at Miss World that has managed to avoid any traditional beauty standards. It’s also the only beauty contest to have been legally defended by Tony Blair.
Not only do the Miss World/Universe et al contests make far more money than is given to the winning girl but it is uncomfortably anachronistic. Not in a cute, ‘ooh look that person’s wearing a cloche hat’ way but in an, ‘oh look that person isn’t allowed to vote’ way.
Squeamish Kate – special talent: I’m really good at finding stuff.
Women, every time you use the word ‘empowered’ when referring to lipstick or spanx, I think a fairy dies or something. Girl Power, lad mags and alt beauty are their own Miss World contests in microcosm. It is the infiltration that gets to me, people think it’s so easy to flip something like Miss World on its head and make a comment. Unfortunately it turns out the comment is; tattooed or decked out in peach satin unless you’re slim, young and pretty you’re not winning anything. Please keep talking to a minimum.
Andrew Logan, who I met with Zandra Rhodes at a garden party once, well I breathed their second hand air, started Miss Alternative World 40 years ago. It is unrehearsed and features Logan in half drag as host. The contestants all look like Leigh Bowery willed them into existence. So far this is the only contest I can find produced to poke fun at Miss World that has managed to avoid any traditional beauty standards. It’s also the only beauty contest to have been legally defended by Tony Blair.
Not only do the Miss World/Universe et al contests make far more money than is given to the winning girl but it is uncomfortably anachronistic. Not in a cute, ‘ooh look that person’s wearing a cloche hat’ way but in an, ‘oh look that person isn’t allowed to vote’ way.
Squeamish Kate – special talent: I’m really good at finding stuff.
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