Position Paper about the Pageantry Industry, High school final essays of English

Download Position Paper about the Pageantry Industry and more High school final essays English in PDF only on Docsity! POSITION PAPER of GABRIELA National Alliance of Women on the Beauty pageants as a form of objectifying women INTRODUCTION GABRIELA National Alliance of Women is a grassroots-based alliance of more than 200 organizations, institutions, desks and programs of women all over the Philippines seeking to wage a struggle for the liberation of all oppressed Filipino women and the rest of our people. While we vigorously campaign on women-specific issues such as women’s rights, gender discrimination, violence against women and women’s health and reproductive rights, GABRIELA is also at the forefront of national and international economic and political issues that affects women. GABRIELA stands for General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Education, Leadership, and Action. The organization is named after the honorable Gabriela Silang, the first Filipino woman to lead a revolt against the Spanish colonization of the Philippines. BACKGROUND Beauty pageants or beauty contests are competitions that focus on the physical attributes of their contestants, although these contests also add up talent, uniqueness, personality, and answers to judges' questions as part of their criteria. These events are known not just locally but also globally, its history was traced back to ancient times in Greece and is still ongoing now. Locally, in the Philippines beauty pageants are held by barrios, barangays, cities, regionals, and nationals. These pageants are originally participated by women but in our modern society, pageants do not limit only to having women as their contestants and are now being held by other genders. For women, these are the so-called “beauty war zones” wherein the prettiest, the curviest, and the rarest of all women compete for a diamond-studded crown. Pageant contestants often have the same appearances: slim, tall, gorgeous, and with alluring smiles, and in all those years of competing globally they have set the standard of what is “beauty”. For years, beauty standards are greatly influenced by beauty pageants and seem to create conflict in terms of appearance with how women perceive themselves and how women are objectified to be dolls for other people. ISSUE Are beauty pageants a way to objectify women? POSITION OF GABRIELA NATIONAL ALLIANCE OF WOMEN We, the GABRIELA National Alliance of Women support the idea that beauty pageants are a way to objectify women. COMMENTS We see many factors that gave us the standings on why we viewed beauty pageants as a way to objectify women. There are thoughts sprung from beauty pageants that create an image such as lowering women to an object for its spectators, a thing for entertainment and satisfaction. We would want to cease the ongoing objectification of women's experience in beauty pageants locally or globally and we would want to impart our understanding of this matter to those people who still view women as objects and to women who see themselves as tools for entertainment in these events. 1. Beauty pageants objectify women by using them as entertainment. According to MacKinnon (1987), a woman is akin to a cup (a thing) and is recognized for how she appears and how she can be used (p. 138). In a contest where beauty is your only asset, women are called winners when “they have it all” and losers when they are “not good enough”. Basing women on their beauty and appearance is an outright objectification and definitely not “appreciation”. Pageants embedded on its viewers that women are to be ogled for and generate ideas that they are for pleasure and satisfaction. Women on pageants are told to flaunt their bodies in bathing suits and be judged by their bodies and not by who they are. Aside from that, beauty pageants like Miss America influenced the catchy phrase “mindless boob” degrading women's intellect and calling them “ just beautiful but fools”. The phrase became the summarization of the objectification of women for feminists like Robin Morgan. Signed, (Cyrille Gatdula) GABRIELA National Alliance of Women Leader REFERENCE Brown, C. (2015). I used to love competing in beauty pageants until I saw first-hand what they were really about. Retrieved from https://www.seventeen.com/life /real-girl-stories/a29399/christa-brown-miss-massachusetts/ Cayabyab, M.J. (2017, January 11). Gabriela solon slams Miss Universe pageant as ‘cover-up’ of PH woes.Inquirer.Retrieved from https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/861486/gabriela-solon -slams-miss-universe-pageant-as-cover-up-of-ph-issues Dworkin, A. (1989). Pornography: Men possessing women. New York, NY: Putnam. MacKinnon, Catharine, 1987, Feminism Unmodified, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University Press. Napikoski, L.(2020). What's Wrong with Beauty Pageants?. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/whats-wrong-with-beauty-pageants-4072580 Palmer, L. (2013). Sluts, brats, and sextuplets: The dangers of reality television for children and teen participants. Studies in Popular Culture, 36(1), 123–143. Retrieved from https://msp821mwf.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/8/4/11840812/rn7_-_exemplar_2.pdf Rosenblatt, M. (2016). A Feminist Argument Against Beauty Pageants. Retrieved from https://www.theodysseyonline.com/feminist-argument-against-beauty-pageants Sharma, A. (2016). Are beauty pageants a way to objectifying women? Retrieved from https://www.gkinformation.com/are-beauty-pageants-a-way-to-objectifying-women/ Wright, K. (2017). "Sexual Objectification of Female Bodies in Beauty Pageants, Pornography, and Media," Dissenting Voices: Vol. 6 : Iss. 1 , Article 12. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/dissentingvoices/vol6/iss1/12 Yarcia, M. (2017). A Feminist Perspective on Beauty Pageants (including Miss Universe). Retrieved from https://ecowarriorprincess.net/2016/01/a-feminist -perspective-on-beauty-pageants-including-miss-universe/