Sarah Palin and the hype about Miss Nepal

The purpose and utility of beauty pageants can forever be debated. If someone labels them “talent contest”, “an indispensable event” or event “beauty contest”, I would rather laugh him off. Let’s keep aside issues like poverty, famine, opportunity, development and education for a moment. There are numerous pressing events that take place in our society and the world that don’t receive the necessary media attention. Many more events never happen because of the apathy the “beautiful” people, media and the lack of necessary resources. Several brilliant young talents go astray and many hard-working hopefuls get disillusioned by the way the world works. If such things are dispensable, an event involving 16 urban bimbos is at best avoidable. There are far more beautiful girls who can’t make it to such events and many others who don’t want to. To relate “talent” or virtue with such events would be driving my readers away from my blog. Hence, I wouldn’t call them a beauty contest, a talent contest or an indispensable event.

A recent pornographic video allegedly features Zenisha Moktan.

However, if someone wants to participate in such an event, someone else wants to make money out of this whole business and if this agreement doesn’t violate any law or practice of the land, why should there be such a fuss? Ok, you call this objectification of the femininity, you call this degradation of values and virtues and you call this a bad example-setter for young girls. If the girls, all of who are old enough to decide for themselves, wish to earn money and fame by objectifying themselves, why should anyone of you object? If an event as avoidable as this can shake your values and denigrate large masses, why don’t you strengthen your values and education system instead? What kind of education have you instilled in your population that it can be mass-hypnotized by such a thing?

Sexy Veep. Former beauty queen, now a celebrity.

While some organizations were busy protesting “Miss Nepal contest”, I was reading news of “Miss Little Girl” that’s now organized by almost every other community and place. While the protesters were cheering on their success in stopping the event, thousands of village girls were silently being trafficked to brothels in India. This farce is a blemish upon the free society and its people. Obviously, this has given participants a free publicity and the organizers have garnered some sympathy. Some people, funnily are also talking about the violation of human rights of the participants and the organizers (though this can’t be disagreed, how the human rights of 16 bimbos becomes national headlines is funny to me). Charges that the protesters are defaming and mentally torturing the participating girls, if true, are very serious and deserve severe punishment.

Incidentally this is an interesting time in the US Presidential election campaign. A former beauty queen, who makes comments dumber than a eighth-grader during televised debates, is the Republican running mate. Based on the early returns, it’s safe to say that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is going to be good for comedy.

If only Tulasa Thapa's tears had caught as much attention as Zenisha's.

Someone has commented, “this isn’t a presidential ticket, this is a sitcom. The maverick and the MILF.” Her stances on abortion, gay-rights and other social issues are very right-wing. Palin advocates abstinence and is against abortion in case of rape victims too. That abstinence doesn’t work as much as abortion has been shown by her own 17-year old unmarried daughter, who is a mom of a 6-month old. Far from being knowledgeable, she struggles for words when she has to talk about foreign policy. During a televised debate last week, the only strengths she demonstrated were her her quirky charms like frequent winks.

It doesn’t take long to figure out on what qualifications Palin bagged the nomination. It pays to be beautiful, to be a woman and to be a beautiful woman. Yes, this is very unfair to many others- some women and many men. Likewise, it is very unfair to all those great number of individuals who have less brains than beauty. After all, everybody can’t become a Hillary Clinton, Hellen Keller, Marie Curie, Lady Augusta Lovelace or a Ramkumari Jhankri. Those who want to put their legs on display or want their breasts to be scored and be applauded for it shouldn’t receive any obstruction from the state machinery. Even Mao’s China has realized it by now. A beauty pageant is just a pageant. By providing it more importance than what it deserves, the Maoists are doing a mistake.