Still a beauty contest

“The perception of beauty is a moral test,” Henry David Thoreau once said. If we take his admonition to mean that how we react to pulchritude says more about ourselves than the object of our gaze, then many of us failed the test last week. Hardly had the crown found its place on the exultant head of the new Miss Universe, Leila Lopes of Angola, when a vocal number of Filipino fans and observers unloaded a torrent of ill-concealed carping and sour grapes online, many of them making the case that the Philippines’ own candidate, Shamcey Supsup, was more deserving of the tiara, or at least a better finish than her third runner-up spot. Those were the mild ones; the truly nasty went so far as to make fun of Miss Angola’s black skin, proving once again that, while they remain exceedingly touchy about being disparaged by foreigners for their brown color, many Filipinos are not above being racist themselves.

Lea Salonga, the only Filipino in this year’s panel of judges and only the fourth Pinoy in the history of the Miss Universe Pageant to have been invited to perform jury duties, came in for her share of drubbing. Her make-or-break question for Miss Angola was too “easy,” was the charge, ensuring the candidate’s quick-witted answer and eventual triumph. (Salonga would clarify afterwards that all questions had been pre-written and assigned to the judges.) Implicit in the criticism was a tribalistic demand: She should have lent a hand to her kababayan!

Thus are otherwise sensible, level-headed men and women unhinged, exposed for the jingoistic sore losers that they are: through a beauty contest. A competition, let’s be clear, that—for all its Pavlovian invocations of charity work, protecting the environment, spreading global goodwill and other such warm, noble motivations—remains at its core a cattle call for surface charms. Not substance or achievement, which would come later for many of these young, bright women, but simply for the fact that Providence has gifted them with better teeth, higher cheekbones, clearer skin, longer legs and straighter spines than the rest of us.

Hasn’t anyone noticed that, for all its outward embrace of inclusiveness and diversity, the Miss Universe Pageant in fact recognizes and celebrates only one inflexible template of “beauty”? Someone tall, slim, curvaceous (heaven forbid that a plus-size woman win the “Miss U”), self-assured enough to parade before a worldwide audience in the barest of “swimsuits” but never too feisty enough to rock the boat with any offbeat, blunt, edgy answer to the innocuous “Kumbaya” moment otherwise known as the Q&A portion?

This is not to denigrate or diminish Supsup’s fourth-place finish in the competition. No doubt she worked hard to make herself deserving of the recognition, and that she did so with the utmost intent of bringing honor to her country. Truth to tell, she didn’t have to go to Sao Paolo, Brazil, to have her comeliness validated. By any standard, she is a stunner. Surely, however, Supsup would be the first to say she’d like to be known for more than her God-given looks. That’s why, over and above her beauty-queen aspirations, she has made a name for herself—a more lasting and proud one in our book—by being an achiever in school, graduating magna cum laude from the University of the Philippines and topping the licensure examinations for architects.

To go by the local media coverage that accompanied her pageant foray, though, such real and substantial accomplishments were of rather tangential import, mentioned only in passing (perhaps architecture as a subject is not sexy enough?). The central preoccupation of the public frenzy inevitably devolved to static about her competition gown (a recycled frock by a Colombian designer?), her standing in the online voting (nothing less than a test of patriotism for many), what her father thought of his daughter’s bid for a “world title” (the TV stations would send reporters all the way to General Santos City to stake out the family for soundbites). And then, when she lost, a tempest of petty, operatic kvetching all around.

Gazing at beauty is a rewarding exercise. But to sweat it, the way this nation does, to farcical extremes? Filmmaker and social critic Jose Javier Reyes said it best: “Hey, this is after all—uh, the Miss Universe beauty pageant? Winning that much-desired crown is not tantamount to any position of responsibility in an international arena like the United Nations or an appointed item in the International Monetary Fund. The job of this queen for a year is [drumroll here] to be the official spokesperson for the Trump Group of Companies.”