Miss Universe’s Latin American Bias

Paulina Vega was crowned Miss Universe 2015 on 26 January. The 22-year-old Colombian is the latest in a long line of Latin American women to win the most coveted title in the world of beauty pageants. Over one third of winners since the annual contest beginning in 1952 have been Latin American.

It has long been thought that the Miss Universe contest, the ultimate aspiration for any beauty queen, pushes women to aspire to unattainable and arbitrary standards of beauty, and I do not contest this view. The young women, who must be between the ages of 18 and 27, are forbidden from undergoing any cosmetic surgery, but the image of ‘perfection’ constructed by the public and judges alike asks them to make some serious sacrifices in order to participate. The guidelines on the official Miss Universe website have extremely strict instructions, for example:

Contestants may not be married or pregnant. They must not have ever been married, not had a marriage annulled nor given birth to, or parented a child. The titleholders are also required to remain unmarried throughout their reign.

Implicitly, this tells us that the ideal woman must exude a beauty unattainable to women whilst still remaining attainable to men, and therefore an object of their sexual desire.

While the liberal media in Europe and the United States have generally condemned beauty pageants for being sexist and encouraging unhealthy attitudes to body image, especially in young women, few have addressed the other huge issue in the culture Miss Universe: elitism. We do not see a culture of pain and fierce competition, and neither have we discussed the culture of discrimination that hangs over the ‘confidently beautiful’ women (as the slogan reads) parading around the arena. Beauty queens are royalty, after all, and part of their allure comes from a projected idea of wealth as part of a ‘perfect’ lifestyle.

But this wealth is often not a mere image. Vega, for example, is the daughter of wealthy cardiologist Rodolfo Vega Llamas, and her grandmother is Elvira Susana Castillo Gómez, Miss Atlántico 1953. She is a beneficiary of a system of vast racial and economic inequality in Colombia, one of the most unequal countries in the world. Wealthy, light-skinned Latin American women (of European descent) are a perfect fit for a contest that idealises women with long slender limbs, [light] tanned skin, thick straight hair, and just a hint of the ‘exotic’.

It is the same reason that Sofia Vergara (who incidentally hails from the same hometown as Paulina Vega) is so well-loved in Hollywood. This year’s contest was criticised for its racialised notions of beauty. Many claimed that Miss Jamaica, Kaci Fennell, who came fifth overall, was cheated of the title. Moments after Vega’s coronation, the hashtag #MissJamaicaShouldHaveWon was trending on social media, and it was discussed more than the competition itself.Her beauty and poise were praised by her fans, who considered perhaps for the first time Miss Universe’s role in perpetuating a racially-narrow attitude towards female beauty. We must question what it says about mainstream standards when the only runner-up to represent a dark-skinned demographic is actually relatively light-skinned, and even then didn’t come out victorious.

Should we accept racial discrimination as part of an inherently elitist system, or is this an opportunity to capitalise on the controversy to bring more attention to the wider problem of racial diversity in the (mis)representation of female beauty.

Photograph: http://www.missuniverse.com/