Last Tuesday, September 13, “Miss U” morning, we woke up really early to do some writing before we put everything on hold to catch this year’s finals on TV.
Hopes were high in our household that our bet, Shamcey, would do really well in the beauty pageant, having topped an early online poll. We wanted her to shine, because she possessed the rare beauty and brains combination that we felt beauty tilts should encourage and showcase.
Aside from Shamcey, among our early best bets were the towering Miss China and the deliciously dusky Miss Angola. Were we psychic? Towards the end of the show, our three bets made it to the Top Five! We really must play the lotto more regularly.
When all was said and done, we wanted our Shamcey to win, but our gut feel was that Miss Angola would be “it”—and so it was.
Her victory was a significant landmark, because it roundly refuted “white” standards of beauty, which many unenlightened and “colonially-minded” people still hold, even in our part of the world.
In fact, when this year’s Top Five stood shoulder to shoulder, they were an exciting sight to behold, because they were so differently “completed”: Miss Ukraine was white; Miss Brazil, Latina; Miss Philippines, kayumanggi; Miss China, jade; and Miss Angola, chocolate-black.
These are the new colors—no, not of Benetton, but of Global Beauty—and we hope that all of us will readjust our psychic standards of pulchritude to suit these more enlightened touchstones, and find greater freedom, worth and vindication in the process.
Aside from more enlightened beauty standards, last Tuesday’s Miss Universe pageant also scored points with the showcase it provided for Inner Beauty, with most of the Top Five getting high marks in the thinking, feeling and feeling-for departments.
This came in strong by way of the informed and felt responses they gave to the judges’ questions in the beauty tilt’s “dreaded” Q&A portion, which most of them handled with sensitivity, conviction and flair.
Indeed, it was the quality of the judges’ questions that fell short, especially the quirky queries about nude beaches and rationalizing a controversial war effort. Hey, jurors, lighten up, you’re judging a beauty contest, not the search for a new Secretary General of the United Nations!
Be that as it may, the 2011 Miss Universe tilt still ended up setting or readjusting some key standards for beauty and worth that should be valued for their enlightening and liberating effects on the ways we look at the world, and at ourselves.
Yes, the “sexy bikini” is still the tilt’s biggest come-on, thus revealing the show’s real intent, but at least it’s being balanced off by the Q&A and evening gown portions. And, the garish Mardi Gras-like “parade of national costumes” has been relegated from stage center to just a visual aside.
How authentically, bracingly beautiful is that?!