However, despite their first success, the middle classes remained unconvinced until the Second World War, when beauty queens were recruited to encourage dashing young men to buy war bonds.
As any girl who went to a single sex school will understand at once, beauty pageants are highly spirited. There is the insight that there is negativity or bitchiness surrounding them. Rumors of backstage sabotage are rare. For example, it is said that some contestants ripped the dresses of their fellow competitors, and put various substances in the make- up of others, in the hope of causing allergic reactions.
But in spite of this, for some girls who take part in beauty pageants, not insertion well can a massively frustrating experience. Laura said that she met a girl who hadn’t positioned in the top ten and as a consequence would no longer be doing such competitions.
Beauty pageants, like so many other things in life, have both positives and negatives. Doing glowing in a beauty pageant could provide an assurance boost that many women in the modern world requirements. At the same time, failing to place well could be very damaging for girls with low self-esteem.
Students also make up a significant number of the women who take part; the recent Miss York is currently studying English Language and Linguistics at this university. Those who treat in this kind of criticism are themselves adding to the harmful stereotyping of women.
Beauty pageants are part and parcel of an image gripped culture, and buying a magazine with pictures of women posing bikinis is debatably as bad, if not worse, than the bikini round in a beauty pageant.
But there remain questions to be asked about what drives girls to enter these competitions. While the traditional stereotypes may not be quite correct, there are wider issues which should be discussed and derided more than the competitions themselves.
