The crowning of black beauty queen Rachel Christies as ‘Miss England’ last week has been met with a flurry of feminist critics lunging for their lippy whilst hastily rearranging their previous opinions of beauty pageants. India Knight, in her column for ‘The Sunday Times’ (26 July 2009) wrote, “Oh sister, have I misjudged beauty queens”.Ms Christie, aged 20, is the niece of athlete Linford Christie and is herself a budding athlete hoping to represent Britain in the Olympics 2012 heptathlon event. She lives with her mother, two brothers and sister in a council flat in west London. Her father was killed in a drugs war when she was just eight and yet, here she is - talented, beautiful, hardworking (she trains for six days a week) - an all round gorgeous gal.
Who cares if an outdated, sexist beauty pageant gave her a break? And who cares why they chose her over others who had garnered a much greater public vote? Grab it girl and head for the top, I say. The feminists can take some comfort from the fact that their protestations over beauty pageants might have forced the ‘Miss England’ judges to choose substance over beauty in this year’s contest: apart from Rachel Christie, the runner-up was Lance-Corporal Kat Hodge, 22, who won a commendation for bravery while serving in Iraq.
Whilst it may be depressing for feminists to read the young girls aspire to nothing more than looking pretty and marrying rich footballers WAG-style, the issue is that the hard-fought freedom and rights that were won by the previous generations give young girls the liberation to make a CHOICE. Some many squander the chance to become a neuroscientist or Prime Minister to go on and become a WAG, others may make good on the promise to break down closed doors and crack glass ceilings.
It is fantastic that Rachel Christie has won the ‘Miss England’ crown – the first black woman to have done so – and she deserves the support of the entire black community for having done so on her own terms.
Asian community confused about beauty
Of course, the Asian community is entirely confused about what it considers beautiful – all our ‘Miss World’ and ‘Miss Universe’ winners have conformed more to the Western ideal of beauty with their wheatish-to-white fair complexions, almond eyes, sharp features and non-voluptuous figures. I racked my brains to find a non-wheatish beauty queen (ideas anyone)?
Asian beauty queens go on to be Bollywood film stars and marry acting aristocracy (like Aishwarya Rai). Some even get snapped up to become the ‘face’ for beauty firms like L’Oreal (Aishwarya again), but depressingly they also spend a lot of time promoting skin-lightening creams - in India ‘Fair & Lovely’ (skin lightening moisturiser) is one of the best-selling creams on the market. Actress Shilpa Shetty gave all such cream makers a big boost by lathering up her face on Celebrity Big Brother.Ironically it was Danielle Lloyd who was ‘Miss England’ when Shilpa was in the house and we all know how well that turned out! Lloyd lost the crown after stirring up scandals for posing nude for Playboy magazine and dating one of the judges during her participation in the pageant, not to mention her part in the racist bullying of Shetty in the Celebrity BB house.
We should let beauty pageants be, if - like talent shows ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ and ‘X-Factor’- they give a young women a leg-up into the beauty-modelling-fashion-acting-music industries, then we surely we should be proud that there is a platform for this.
And Rachel, when you’re winning the heptathlon event in 2012, I’ll be there (like the rest of Britain) shouting myself hoarse with the words “Go Girl, Go!”
Beauty pageant winners who’ve become actresses:
Lara Dutta – ‘Miss Universe’ 2000
Priyanka Chopra – ‘Miss World’ 2000
Yukta Mookhey –‘Miss World’ 1999
Aishwarya Rai- ‘Miss World’ 1994
Sushmita Sen – ‘Miss Universe’ 1994
Preeti Desai – 'Miss Great Britain' 2006
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