Most people around us are concerned about their beauty, yearning to make themselves more attractive and presentable to others. Thus, comes in place the beauty pageants that takes the participants through various rigorous trainings to develop their personality and presentation skills and declare the participant who has aced through all the stages of the process and declare them as the winner.
Earlier the participation in a beauty pageant as considered disrespectful by the society. But now time has changed, and beauty pageants are not only accepted by the society but also, they are very widely popular amongst the masses.
PROS AND CONS OF BEAUTY PAGEANTS
| PROS | CONS |
| Gives recognition | Wounds self-image |
| Personality development training | Puts too much pressure on participants |
| Improvement of communication skills | Exploits children |
| Helps the participants to face their fears | Expensive |
| Makes the participants competent to work under stress | Promotes unhealthy beauty standards |
| Prize money | Judgement is based on societal conventions of beauty |
| Makes the participants disciplined | Allow parents to reap the monetary advantages |
| The participants can make new friends in the industry | |
| Helps in networking |
Advantages OF BEAUTY PAGEANTS
- Gives recognition
The participation and winning of any beauty pageants gives the aspirants confidence and recognition in the field. They get offers from the industry and become a known household face, which helps them in their career.
- Personality development
After participating in a beauty pageant, the participants need to work with an expert pageant coach. The coach helps the participants delve deep into each of their persona and focus on the strengths of their personality and embolden them. This is hard to achieve by oneself without an expert pageant coach.
- Improving communication skills
Communication skill is one of the most valued skills in today’s world. Almost all kinds of job require good communication skills. If one can communicate effectively with the targeted people, then half the job is done. Beauty pageants also hugely focus on communication skills of the participants and work towards making them better.
- Helps face fears
All of us as human beings have some fears that we never want to face. Same is the case with the participants of beauty pageants. But the whole contest makes them face their hidden fears and overcome them. This makes them brave and courageous and affects their personal life in an irreversible way.
- Learning to work under stress
Stress is a part of human life. To keep aside stress and perform one’s duty and carry out the responsibilities given is a laudable skill. Working under stress is also a skill that one needs to work and survive in the beauty industry. This important life skill of learning to work under stress is also taught by expert beauty pageant coaches.
- Prize money
Most beauty pageants give away a huge amount of cash prize or scholarships to the winner which helps them pursue their ambition in life. If they want to invest in their higher education which is far away from the beauty industry or if they want to have a career in the beauty industry, this prize money will help them get through.
- Teaches discipline
Any job in any part of the world require a certain amount of discipline. It is an important life skill that helps people to work on themselves and is considered fruitful everywhere. Beauty pageants strictly focus on discipline as the participants need immense dedication and discipline to prepare themselves for the competition.
- Making new friends
Inspite of the competition among the participants, they end up making friends who support them throughout their life. If the participants aim to pursue a career in the beauty industry, this is an added advantage as it always helps to have friends in one’s field of work.
- Helps in networking
If you are looking to have a career in the beauty industry, then beauty pageant is your place to be. Participating in a beauty pageant makes one familiar with how things work in the industry and know the technicalities. It also brings them in touch with the people and helps form relationship with them which might help them further in their career.
Disadvatages OF BEAUTY PAGEANT
- Wounds self-image
To most of us, being accepted and considered beautiful is very important. The competition makes the participants walk in front of a crowd so as to judged by them depending on mostly how they look. This harms the self-image and confidence of the participants.
- Puts too much pressure
The preparation for a beauty pageant puts too much pressure on the participants and it may sometime prove to be too extreme for some of the participants as everyone does not have the same mental tenacity.
- Exploits children
The beauty pageants for children are one of the most famous and discussed pageants. But the children who participate in these beauty pageants lose their innocence and work towards pleasing the crowd. This might be entertaining for the audience but it is surely not beneficial for the children and is a type of exploitation of them.
- Expensive
One needs to pay a lot to register and participate in these beauty pageants. Not just the cost of registration, the amount of money spent on the preparation for the pageant is also huge.
- Promotes unhealthy beauty standards
The participants are made to go through rigorous training to conform to the unhealthy beauty standards of having a slim physique, glowing skin and such. This can adversely affect people whose beauty do not conform to conventions.
- Judged based on societal standards
The judgement of beauty based on societal standards is something very unethical. Beauty comes in all forms and is not controlled by an individual. This makes the participants vulnerable.
- Allow parents to reap monetary advantages
The prize earned by children in beauty pageants are given to their parents. The parents might push their children into the industry just for the financial benefits.
Beauty pageants are extremely popular and are here to stay but they should also make some changes to the system and consider the judgement based on beauty standards to be unethical and focus more on skill.