How beauty pageants became home to an ugly culture war

As a child growing up in the Eighties, I used to watch Miss World. Or rather, my mother did. From her chintz armchair, she would critique the contestants just as assiduously as the judges. “Terrible legs,” she’d frown. “Oh, Miss Puerto Rico has a gorgeous figure. Not too fat and not too thin.” And so began the not so subliminal messaging that, whether you entered one or not, if you were a woman, life would always be a beauty pageant.

My mother came of age in the 1950s, when societal expectations and a paucity of career options necessitated most women fixate, if not capitalise on, their beauty, since they couldn’t so easily capitalise on their brains. It stood to reason that beauty pageants were hugely popular in those days.

Beauty standards were also woefully narrow then. When the American pageant Miss Universe began in 1952, its purpose was to anoint one woman as representing an idealised vision of beauty that everyone, regardless of their own nationality or race, would deem perfect. After 72 years, this concept is rightly condemned as being as reductive and outdated as the sparkling crown that sits atop the winner’s head.

But beauty pageants, like viruses, have shown they can mutate, expanding their restrictive parameters in a bid for what cynics would call shameless PR, and organisers would opine is cultural relevancy. This week, Carolina Shiino, 26, won the 56th Miss Japan beauty pageant, sparking fierce debate in her country, on account of being born in Ukraine.

“It was like a dream,” she told reporters in impeccable Japanese. Many branded it a nightmare, pointing out that Japanese women already feel pressure to conform to Western beauty standards. Others defended the decision, saying that broadening the definition of what it means to be Japanese is a positive thing.

That beauty pageants would find themselves at the heart of the culture wars was on nobody’s bingo card for 2024, but Shiino’s win has sparked an important debate. Born in 1998, she moved to Japan at the age of five, after her Ukrainian mother remarried to a Japanese man.

The first naturalised Japanese citizen to win, Shiino’s triumph recalls a similar debate in 2015, when Ariana Miyamoto became the first biracial woman to be crowned Miss Japan, dividing opinion as to whether a person with a Japanese mother and an African American father should be eligible.

But nationality and race aren’t the only contentious elements of the modern beauty pageant: for some observers, so, too, is gender. Last July, Rikkie Valerie Kolle became the first transgender woman to win Miss Netherlands in the pageant’s 94-year history, and the second openly trans competitor to take part in Miss Universe.

“The journey started as a super insecure little boy,” she told reporters. “And now I’m standing here as a strong and empowering and confident woman.” It’s perhaps worth noting that the Miss Universe Organization began allowing transgender women as contestants in 2012, during which time it was owned by Donald Trump (he sold the rights to the event in 2015 to the talent agency WME-IMG). It took ten more years for the organisation to expand its pool of eligibility to include married women and mothers.

But perhaps this isn’t surprising for a pageant which has only crowned six black winners since its inception in 1952, the most recent in 2019, when Miss South Africa’s Zozibini Tunzi won the title. “We are slowly moving to a time when women like myself can finally find a place in society, can finally know they’re beautiful,” she said in her speech.

However enthusiastically beauty pageants have tried to adapt, their fans don’t seem to have adapted with them. Last December, 20 year-old mathematics undergraduate, Eve Gilles, was crowned Miss France in front of a TV audience of 7.5 million people, but immediately suffered a backlash on account of having short hair.

“We’re used to seeing beautiful Misses with long hair, but I chose an androgynous look,” she said after her victory, adding, “I would like to show that the competition is evolving and society too, that the representation of women is diverse. [Every] woman is different, we’re all unique.”

Exactly how different and unique women are allowed to be, it seems, is still an intense matter of debate. This isn’t the 1950s any more. With so many other platforms available – not least via social media – the idea that the best way to fight for inclusion, diversity and visibility is via the medium of a beauty pageant is surely as outmoded as the swimsuit round.