After two years of inactivity in all areas due to the cursed pandemic, the long-awaited summer festivals are back with music, dances, humor, magic and beauty contests... or not.
What seemed like a controversial decision adopted by a servant in the distant August of 2019 as Councilor for Festivities in the Arrecife City Council, and which caused so much commotion at the time, regains prominence and is reinforced by the news these days about the trend of increasingly numerous municipalities in the Canary Islands, such as Candelaria, Tuineje or Santa Cruz de La Palma, which refuse to finance beauty contests with public money.
It is comforting to see the evolution of the feeling of many public administrations that are beginning to unify criteria and govern with a gender perspective, fighting for equality and the breaking of stereotypes, ceasing to promote, in that case, a beauty competition in which scrutinized bodies and faces are valued based on their adaptation to certain established canons.
To begin with, talking about beauty implies a certain relativity in terms of defining what is beautiful. The sociocultural patterns that establish the concept of "beauty" vary according to the market, the historical moment and the geography. In addition, being "pretty" or "handsome" does not imply any merit except the DNA of each one and/or their greater or lesser ability to resort to the instruments that aesthetic medicine puts at their disposal, leaving out of the possible candidates a majority that does not reach the established canons.
The organizers of beauty contests usually defend this type of event as a springboard for young women who want to open up a future in the world of fashion and catwalks. They sell the illusion of easy money, glamour and fame. They do not mention the industry behind it that causes these same young women to be subjected to social pressures such as, for example, staying very thin.
Hence, the desire to become part of that "wonderful kingdom of beauty" is related to serious eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia, and with mental health problems at an early age caused by the non-acceptance of oneself and by the frustration of not meeting the expectations of the culture to the body and the image imposed by society.
It is not about prohibiting the celebration of beauty contests, nor is the problem solved by extending the competitions to men, because what is not good for women is not good for men either. But public administrations should not fuel these types of disorders with taxpayer money. Nor should they finance activities that promote inequality or non-inclusion, or that encourage competition based on a "package" that has nothing to do with the value of the person.
ModArrecife in 2019 amply demonstrated that young women who are looking for a future in fashion and on the catwalk can be linked with modeling agencies and fashion designers without the need to compete.
Times change and we realize that, on many occasions, what we call traditions are nothing more than bad habits.
*Nova M. Kirkpatrick, PSOE councilor in the Arrecife City Council