We seem to be creating a society that takes two steps forward
and three steps backwards. It appears
that as a whole it gets a little more and more confusing year after year in
regard to the gender discussions. Who is
to blame? Is there any one entity to blame? Are we ourselves as women taking
part in the big game? Do men really know what it is they want? Are they the
ones that are so confused that they continually try to capture us and place us
into their little dream world? Is it
intentional or unintentional that they must create this façade about our gender
as being weaker, less valuable, while creating this need to dominate us and to
keep us in the box they have envisioned that we must ultimately fit in to? Or are they subconsciously fearful with the
knowledge that they are the ones with the most to lose and fear our strength
and capabilities so much so that it is in their own best interest to
continually play us down? I’m not sure I
have the answers or even if the answers exist however I would like to address
my “male confusion theory.”
This
struggle continues and seems to acquire improvements through the years only to
see the arrival of either new obstacles or revisit ones that have been
exaggerated and existed for years.
Because it was so eloquently stated regarding what girls/women must face
on a daily basis I have to quote Professor Direiter here by saying that the
messages of “hypersexualization, objectification, stereotypes, body image, body
shaming, slut-shaming, underepresentation, misrepresentation, messages to
children, messages to adolescents, and messages to boys. I'm overwhelmed!”
and I couldn’t agree more.
Unfortunately
I believe there are two words which simplify the continuation of the negative
portrayal of women in existence today – competition and money. Let us follow the simple lineage of the Miss
Teen USA pageant. Now pageants have been
around for a long time, starting as a platform for “competition.” We can go
back as far as ancient Greece where the goddesses, Hera, Aphrodite and Athena
looked to Hera to choose one of them as being the most beautiful; hence
competition, let the games begin. Each
goddess bribed Alexandros, who was a poor mortal; hence money and/or something
of value. Alexandros chooses Aphrodite
and in return he gains Helen of Troy; equals the prize. We all know how that story turned out. (People & Events: Origins of the Beauty Pageant ,
2001) Who’s to say that Aphrodite was indeed the
most beautiful or was it the prize that was gained which in turn became the
deciding choice? It’s an answer we may
never know however what we do know is that winning the competition and the
reward itself are very powerful triumphs to be holder of.
Moving forward to the Miss Teen USA
pageant of 2013, we have a beautiful young woman who stumbles on what seems to
be a fairly easy question to answer, especially due to the fact that it
revolves around her own gender. Keeping
in mind that the position she is vying for is one that would be on the
forefront of answering pivotal questions in all sorts of venues while
representing the country she lives in. I
went to the Miss USA website, of course Donald Trump and NBC Universal own the
corporation. I couldn’t find an exact
mission statement and if you visit the website the order of links goes from the
present winner, contestants, pageant information to photos, videos (that video
is not present however), the less
valuable information to the more important information, news and about us. The first thing I noticed was this order or
relevancy of the links placement. I
wanted information, knowledge about the organization, I wanted a mission
statement, nope. The closest I could get was in the history section under about
us. A very brief paragraph and within
the first line I found this, “These women are savvy, goal-oriented and aware,” (Miss Teen USA, 2015) describing the
contestants. I would say that poor Miss
Utah failed in two out of three. I’ll
give her goal-oriented even though her goal was to be in a beauty pageant. Believe it or not however, she was still
rewarded with her little flub up. She still won in a sense, even with her
rather large mistake her brains seemed to be overlooked by beauty and she came in
3rd place. Also, look at the
publicity she has had, I’m sure we’ll be seeing her around in some form or
fashion.
So here we have a male oriented
organization taking advantage of young women’s dreams to become “Miss
Beautiful” and hopefully moving on to become “Miss Whatever.” They exploit the
outer body and obviously pay little attention to the inner brain, which is not
as important as the organization’s statement reads. Most importantly this is all done while
making a good deal of money off of her and all the rest of the girls. It is a very lucrative business as these
women and their families spend a great deal of money for a grab at that title. According to Nadine DeNinno from the
International Business Times, she reports that “Contestants often spend an amount that is more than the cash
prize awarded to the pageant's winner: reportedly somewhere in the five-figure
range for national pageants, and presumably much less for state and local titles.”
(Deinno, 2014) Multiply that by the statistic of “approximately
2.5 million girls compete in more than 100,000 beauty pageants each year in the
U.S. ” (Id) and if Miss Utah can do the
math we arrive at a pretty hefty monetary figure. If we circle this back around to her original
question regarding the wage discrepancy, wouldn’t she have liked a piece of
this pie?
l followed up on her a little further
and have included her original “faux pas” clip.
The video included in the course content article could not be viewed as
you guessed it NBC Universal blocked it on copyright grounds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ysMLAmiBRo (Marissa Powell actual response). I also found a clip from the Today show,
where she was able to save grace. http://www.today.com/video/today/52238682#52238682 – (Today show Miss Utah’s “second chance”) But,
guess who owns the Today Show, yes NBC, may the beauty pageants continue.
In retrospect we see the promotion of
women to go forth and be educated, gain a career, we can do anything, have the freedom
to reach for the stars, hear words that profess we are viewed equally, we
gained the right to vote and even to run for political office, we can bring
home the bacon and fry it up in a pan too.
However, we are still viewed as the pretty thing, someone who is
emotional, weak and just not up to par with how men rate.
There was one small piece within one
of the “Miss Representation” videos that resonated with me over all the
rest. There was a short clip where Texas
State Senator Leticia Van De Putte eloquently and in a reserved manner spoke up
during talks regarding an abortion bill.
She stated to her male colleagues respectively, “At what point must a
female Senator raise her hand and her voice to be recognized over the male
colleagues in the room?” (Tuma, 2014) Her response came after arriving late and attending
abortion talks over “the harshest abortion laws in the nation” (Tuma, 2014) held in the Texas
Capital while supporting close friend, Senator Wendy Davis who had been trying
to gain the floor for “11 hours.”(Id)
Sounds to me like this could be paralleled with the time spent for a
woman while in labor about to give birth.
Senator Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio) “had not even planned on
being in attendance.”(Id) She had a
year of “personal tragedies… the sudden death of her infant grandson, the death
of her mother-in-law and a car accident the week prior that killed her father” –
the senator arrived at the Capital just hours after her father’s funeral.”(Id) Is this not the sign of immense strength,
fortitude, composure, intelligence, vision for what is right, selflessness and
grace?
How many
women have been placed in situations where a man may not survive or act well
within the same scenario? How many men
have dealt with their emotional breakdowns in not so positive ways and get away
with it. There have been numerous times
that we have read about some influential married man having an affair or
perhaps having fun with a cigar, getting drunk and in a car accidents while occasionally
taking another’s life, or how many of them have been hunting with a friend and
accidentally shot him? What about their
emotions, the famous one of getting angry no matter what the situation calls
for. I’ll bet when Senator Van de Putte
spoke up there were probably a few of them that were making some negative utterances
under their breath.
When will
it all cease? Perhaps when a bill gets passed where male embryos are required
to be injected with a little more estrogen and little testosterone removed. For us women, well we need to really start to
believe in our own value, to stand up for one another at every turn, for when
we do this we stand up for ourselves as well.
That is when we will start to see true change.
Works Cited
Deinno, N. (2014, August). International Business
Times. Retrieved from The International Business Times Website:
http://www.ibtimes.com/high-cost-beauty-pageants-1595724
Miss Teen USA. (2015). Retrieved March 19, 2015, from The Miss Universe Website:
http://www.missuniverse.com/missteenusa/info/history
People & Events: Origins of the Beauty Pageant . (2001). (J. Houck, Producer) Retrieved March 19,
2015, from The PBS Website:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/missamerica/peopleevents/e_origins.html
Tuma, M. (2014, March 25). Leticia Van de Putte’s
Lite Guv Bid Assures One Outcome: She will be heard. San Antonia Current.
Retrieved March 19, 2014, from
http://www.sacurrent.com/sanantonio/leticia-van-de-puttes-lite-guv-bid-assures-one-outcome-she-will-be-heard/Content?oid=2249957
