Beauty Competitions, or as some people call them Beauty pageants degrade women to mere objects. Such a competition is the exploitation of women by men and other women. If the beauty competition was based on skill or ability, that would be fine. But nowadays people judge them for their outer appearance. For example, if five people were running in a race, only one will win. There is no doubt as to who ran faster. There is also no need for anyone to judge such competitions. These competitions also affect the self-esteem of some women who feel that a size ten isn’t good enough for the competitions.

In every pageant or competition, you always see every contestant at a size zero to five. This brings a lot of high self-esteems down because they feel that the world revolves around skinny models. Is beauty not enduring thing? Or does it lasts only a year? Beauty contests are well promoted by the media, with television and images, which influence young women’s opinions on appearance. The participants of these contests are poor role models for these girls as they set impractical body weight, breast size and clear skin standards.

This is another way of saying you have to be perfect in order to even compete in these competitions. This sets an ideal female body, which only a minority of women can then become incredibly harmful to young women by encouraging dieting eating disorders and cosmetic surgery, or simply making them feel inadequate and ugly. For instance, when young girls see these models on television they automatically think that throwing up, over exercising, and getting plastic surgery is a good thing to do. The models are showing them that this is the way to fit in.

Every woman is beautiful, if she can just be herself. The moment women flaunt themselves, as in beauty pageants, they become an object to be degraded and exploited sex object for a year. Beauty is a quality that is in the one who is seeing what he or she might say to be beautiful. Let’s say, a woman considered to be beautiful by one person may not be so to another. One man may like a woman with an hour-glass figure. Another may like a plump woman who is not a size one. One may also find long hair beautiful while another may liken long hair to that of a hideous witch.

Beauty is purely subjective. No two persons can agree on what beauty is. That is why people get this mistaken at beauty pageants. They only see one beauty that every contestant must have. They have to have a certain height requirement, clear, radiant skin, perfect size breast and figure. This is one reason why pageants are very degrading towards women who may not fit in that category. They see that as an insult toward them. The women contemplate that the models they see in beauty pageants are the so called perfect body for this country, when in reality they are not.

There are different types of beauty here. Some may like petite women others may like full-sized women. The old saying goes; beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In other words, someone or something that is considered attractive to one person may not necessarily appeal to another, as I said before. In my opinion, the prize of the Beauty Queen in one competition is unfair because they set unrealistic beauty standards for an audience of easily influenced young girls, they encouraging judging on appearance, rather than on a person’s character, and mainly because they objectify women.