FIRST, I would like to say that when a Filipina wins a beauty pageant abroad, I also rejoice. I’m happy and I share in the joyous details of her winning. My sense of belief and degree of celebration is commensurate to the title a Filipina has been bestowed. If it’s Miss International, I can accept that easily: a beauty can indeed be international. If it is a new title or franchise, like Miss Supranational, I can easily believe in it, too, although I doubt if the fans care about the prefix “supra”, which means “above”. Could this mean the beauty contests will result to a beauty that floats above the limited sense of the national territory? Maybe.
If it’s Miss Asia, then the more credible the competition can be. Lately, Miss Asia Pacific has been revived, leading to a new way of looking at the transcendental beauty, one that looks away from the continent but into the wide expanse of the sea below and behind us
But then there’s also Miss World, still a title bearable; after all, a woman can represent the world against other worlds, an assumption that’s already contentious.
And then there is Miss Universe, a title that’s not only overreaching—that is, if, indeed, we can reach the farthest points in the universe—but one that’s troublingly absurd and demented. How can we, a mere speck in the universe, judge in our own backyard the beauty to represent a space the end or beginning of which we can only, simply and with great naïveté, imagine.
Well, I may be taking too seriously this phenomenon called beauty pageant.
The truth is the beauty pageant called Miss Universe is here with us. The truth is there are only two things this pretty laid-back culture of ours to get all riled up about: elections and beauty pageants. Both share so many things in common. Elections are also, deep within its ideological bowels, a competition. Female and male pulchritude also counts in election, if not physical allure then a seductive personality can work to the advantage of the candidate. Come to think of it, Miss Universe participants are also called candidates.
Politics, both of the good and bad kind, attend elections and beauty contests.
The politics of identity, at its core, remains the strongest in beauty pageants. The moment a candidate gets down the plane and walks to the crowd, sash across her body, a country represented by that woman blooms and is born in front of us. She speaks and the language of a nation produces a territory before us. She walks and the country of her birth and beauty is judged.
Belgium, Bosnia Tanzania, the Virgin Islands and may more are names we memorize through the faces that have come to our land. Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico are countries we view intensely and with interest because they always land on the Top 5. Or 10, or whatever number the present jury deem wise and propitious. The oracle no less fits the gravity of a Miss Universe concourse.
In 1974, well two years after the declaration of martial law, the Marcoses invited the Miss Universe pageant to be brought to our shores. By this time, we had already two title-holders—Gloria Diaz in 1969 and Margarita Moran in 1973. For the occasion, the conjugal dictatorship built the Folk Arts Center, part of the expanding structures that gave rise to Imelda Marcos’s “edifice complex”.
The Miss Universe pageant glossed over the dictatorship and temporarily quited the Filipino people, in general afflicted with love for beauty queens of all kinds and beauty contests of all forms. The entire Metro Manila gave a wild, warm welcome to the contestants who were adopted by barangays, then a newly created unit. There were no feminist antibeauty contest rants because it was martial law.
The contest had to be aired early in the morning so it could be shown on US TV in the early evening due to time differences. Miss Spain, Amparo Muñoz, won the competition. She came back to the Philippines to make films and figured in a slapping incident with a local producer.
The pageant was back in 1994, a competition which was won by India’s Sushmita Sen. How can one forget her winning answer about the essence of a woman? After Sen, everybody felt they had to deliver essay-like responses to clinch the title.
Each year, the Binibining Pilipinas Charities hold the Binibining Pilipinas contest for representatives to the Miss Universe, Miss International and a host of other competitions. Each year, there is a tacit information that all titles have the same weight, but it remains an unwritten rule that Miss Universe is, indeed, the title that runs dominant across the universe.
Ever since this year’s contestants or delegates began arriving, social media and other forms of news carried every movement of these ladies. The schedule is hectic and it’s best to assume the last woman standing will be one who is not only beautiful but also one who is emotionally and physically strong. This whole beauty contest is really pitting strong woman against each other. In Vigan they were asked to dress in a terno and walk the length of an old street. In Boracay they were asked to build synthetic homes for fishes. From flamboyant pageantry to ecological preservation, these women are out there. All throughout those events, they tried to maintain their smile and poise. “Poise” is, indeed, the magic word. That’s the ability to remain composed and serious and calm even if thousands are waiting for you to fall on your face, or to commit funny grammatical lapses. They also had to do the beauty queen wave. I feel they’re going through a Death March and we who are celebrating are on the side cheering them on. Fans should be ready always to fan them or hand them bottles of water. This is no beauty contest; this is a punishment for beautiful women.
The audience for the Miss Universe pageant is really composed of cruel observers. As the famous danseur Rudolf Nureyev put it: when you dance, people are expecting you to fall. When you don’t, then they cheer you and lustily applaud your performance.
When Gloria Diaz won in 1969, the world was glued to the radio and free TV for the first landing of a man on the Moon. It’s documented that one of the astronauts did ask about any news from the Earth. Nasa responded by saying the new Miss Universe is from the Philippines.
Was someone out there in outer space listening to the astronauts?
Like the assumption that we can choose an Earth woman to represent the universe, the landing on the Moon also created a satellite some places of which had been given names by men from our planet. How presumptuous indeed!