The selection process
I’ve been putting this one off for a couple of days, but time is up. It’s about that guy in New Hampshire who won a scholarship by winning a beauty pageant.
The photo makes it all too clear what kind of body type is considered good, appropriate, conforming, acceptable in female people – extremely small, thin, dainty, with one permanently bent knee and a short skirt. That’s the right kind of body and presentation and skirt to have, but it’s not the kind to win. The winner is built like a fullback and wears a dress that trails on the sidewalk. He’s also a male person. The competition appears to be for female people, but a man was allowed to compete and he won despite his failure to conform to the apparently preferred body type and his not so skimpy dress.
He also won a $7500 scholarship, so that’s a female person who lost one.
I don’t think “beauty pageants” should exist, myself – I think in a sane world they wouldn’t exist any more than they exist for men. I don’t think scholarships should be awarded for prettiness (hint: scholar doesn’t mean pretty person). But they do and they are, so I don’t think men should muscle in on them.
If an oversize bloke like him can enter a beauty pageant, on whatever basis, then why not his horse, dog, cat, the gorilla from the local zoo, or whatever as well.? To exclude them would have to be species discrimination, ie speciesist. I don’t see why anyone should have to put up with that.
That ‘we the people’ opening of the US Constitution just needs a bit of reinterpretation by the Supreme Court on somewhat more liberal lines.
Someone needs to send an animated version of that photo to the New Yorker for the caption contest.
This reminds of a kind of story that you’ll read about once or twice a year. Some high school sports team has a “trainer” or “team manager” who is a mentally disabled kid, and the team will arrange with the opposing team to put the kid in a game and let them score. The kid feels great, and it’s a cute heartwarming story for everyone else.
Of course, those incidents are always carefully arranged so that it’s late in a blowout or otherwise meaningless. Nobody’s letting that kid score the winning basket or touchdown in the championship game.
Yeah but are those female brave and stunning?