Body image in beauty competitions
Summary: A little piece on why I think Miss England helps, instead of hinders young women and their feelings towards their bodies.
Have you watched Beyonce’s ‘Pretty Hurts’ video? If you haven’t, I’d recommend watching it, and witnessing for yourself a horrendous misrepresentation of the young women that enters beauty pageants. Warning – if you’re a competitor, it might make you angry.
It’s important to point out that I am a massive Beyonce fan, and this video and song might very well reflect her views on the beauty pageant industry in the USA, but considering her worldwide pop domination, she surely must have realised she was stereotyping pageant girls on a global level?
Anyway, I digress. Let’s go through what the video shows. It is implied in the video that women have had Botox and other forms of surgery to participate in beauty competitions. I have no problem with people choosing to have a little help in that department, but I can honestly say I’ve never seen or heard of such practices happening in the UK pageant industry. It is a dangerous portrayal in two ways; firstly young girls will think they may have to have such procedures to enter competitions, and also the women who have already entered such competitions will be stigmatized for being one of the enforcers, even if they haven’t gone through such cosmetic changes.
The music video also implies the starvation beauty contestants go through, including the rumoured practice of eating cotton wool to make one feel full instead of eating.
I have four years’ experience in pageantry and I have never seen bulimic contestants. I’ve actually seen girl’s wolf down bacon sarnies and in Miss England 2011, where I was a contestant, me and my roommate scoffed a load of Krispy Kreme’s after the final round. That year also saw Nandos as one of the sponsors, and us girls were delighted to wolf down some chicken and chips!
Beauty pageants in the UK are not addicted to thinness. If they were, how would Miss England competitors survive the extreme boot camp, where you have to fit and healthy, with bounds of energy? This is what you get with a healthy diet and balanced exercise regime, not starving yourself. A number of contestants have ran The London Marathon and many have participated in charity runs, walks, and other events that demand a high level of physical fitness. This year’s boot camp, ran by Xtreme Boot Camps was incredibly tough, yet incredibly rewarding and the boot camp instructors were keen to give out brilliant advice on how to be strong, not skinny.
This year, as Miss Southampton 2014, I competed in the semi-finals and finals of Miss England and I met young women of various shapes and sizes. Pageants are the most real representations of women in the public eye; and maybe it’s different the other side of the pond, but in the UK we have a great balance of appreciating internal and external ‘beauty.’
If you look at the top 15 in this year’s final, you’ll see how different all the contestants are, looks-wise and personalities too. While Miss England is classed as a beauty competition, the contestants who have rocking personalities win the crown.
You get to see women in the flesh, with no airbrushing, and hear their views on the world, to see them create ecological fashion and talk about charities close to their heart, as well as perform talented acts and skills live. What is more real than that?
Miss England has massively helped my body confidence, and yes, from my first time competing to my last in June this year, I lost a little weight. But it was because the competition had educated me about healthy foods and I also trained to run a 10 mile roadrace for charity. I didn’t lose weight and tone up for Miss England, I did it for myself because I wanted to be healthier.
I was a student binge drinking and eating a lot of cheesy pizzas and chips back in 2011; nowadays I have banned bread and alcohol. I have a number of stomach disorders and the advice given to me by former Miss England’s, organisers and fellow contestants have really benefited my health. Getting into fitness a bit more also meant attending a dance club, and because of that I managed to make the top group in the talent round this year, so yes, it helps being fit and healthy, but not skinny and starving.
“Proving you don't need to be a size 0 to be a Miss :-) this was the photo I was most nervous about!”
The Gloucester Citizen reported that Juliette is now planning talks with pupils at Chosen Hill School to talk to pupils about body confidence issues.
I totally get how Juliette felt about posing in a swimsuit. This is an optional round by the way, but I was very scared about exposing my body. But once I had done the shoot with the lovely David Freeman, who put me completely at ease and is a good friend of Miss United Kingdom 2014 Kirsty Heslewood, and saw the other contestants photos, I felt so much better, because everyone is so different and unique.
As Juliette says:
“At Miss UK there were girls of all sizes and I was a bit worried about who I would be up against, particularly as I'm only 5 foot 3.
“I soon realised they were more interested in the kind of person you were more than anything else.”
Okay, so you might not agree with beauty pageants, but what Beyonce has portrayed is something myself and a number of Miss England girls fight against. We like food. And a lot of us also like running, swimming and keeping fit. And what you can’t argue with is the new found confidence I have with my body, and the same I believe goes for Juliette, who was easily the most positive girl during boot camp.
Miss England might be a beauty pageant by name but the self-esteem boost it brings from sweating your butt off in boot camp and realising all the other girls love profiteroles as much as you do runs deeper than simply external beauty; it promotes the idea of loving yourself firstly, which will reflect on the outside.
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