Transgender media mogul buys “Miss Universe”
Certain previous owner is pissed at getting relegated to paragraph 3 before his name gets mentioned once
A thing of beauty is a joy forever —
- John Keats, Endymion
“Miss Universe” just grew a great deal more interesting since its purchase by Chakrapong “Anne” Chakrajutathib, described by NPR as “a transgender Thai media mogul.”
Pageantry reflects power. Many people focused on Donald Trump’s antics as owner, overlooking subtler, more terrifying manifestations of power over American culture.
Check out this video, and watch as 45 or so contestants deny science to win.
Nobody died if Trump walked in on young ladies while they changed, said mean things, or boasted about sexual assault.
Tens of thousands of people actually died as a result of science denial. Whatever the pageant contestants actually believed, more than 90% of them calculated science denial was a winning answer in that pageant.
For most American Evangelical churches, opposition to science has remained a longstanding conviction, to the extent that “elite” is typically code for “anyone with advanced education who accepts science.” At the top of American Evangelical churches, the financiers who choose which pastors will be heard by millions of Americans have no problem using the best scientists they can pay for — particularly if they know the ‘faithful’ don’t believe in it. A reliable, manageable knowledge gap is easily monetized.
Involvement with the pageant offered Trump’s network a vast pool of talented agents who could be recruited and penetrate every major Evangelical institution — and do so cheap.
Sex sells. Particularly if the ladies selling it are “modest” enough to flaunt cleavage while covering their nipples — the exact quantum of sexy needed to capture and control attention.
And if any woman violates unwritten rules or gets out of line, suddenly discover her inadequate modesty, lousy hair, or whatever other flaw requires tossing her aside and replacing with some new young thing.
Whatever happens to Miss Universe, few serious pageant contestants will place stock in one ‘classic’ American text on beauty standards, The Woman Beautiful.
As a general rule, the man of brains and good sense — and he’s the only man worth considering seriously — heartily despises the useless beauty.
- Helen Follett Stevans, The Woman Beautiful (1901)
Really?
Sometimes, the fact that ‘traditional values’ are so widely invoked and so rarely actually studied confounds me. How can one ‘return’ to ‘traditional values’ without knowing what they were? Are free ebooks too expensive for people to read?
Yet Stevans’ own book suggests even she skipped some of the work to comment properly. Consider the poetic quote she opens her book, from the fourth Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Nicholas Rowe:
The bloom of opening flowers, unsullied beauty,
Softness and sweetest innocence she wears,
And looks like Nature in the world’s first Spring.Nicholas Rowe, Tamerlane
But what’s the actual context for these lines? The University of Pennsylvania links to many ebooks featuring Rowe’s work, including one printing you can find here. The play itself reads:
Tamerlane:
This is indeed to conquer,
And well to be rewarded for thy conquest;
The bloom of o’ning flow’rs, unsullied beauty,
Softest and sweetest innocense she wears,
And looks like nature in the world’s first spring —
But say, Axalla —
So the quote is accurate at least, but what’s that stuff about conquest? Is this really about beauty at all?
Then there’s the response to those lines:
Selima:
Most renown’d in war!
(crosses to centre and kneels to Tamerlane.)
Look with compassion on a captive maid,
Though born of hostile blood; nor let my birth
Deriv’d from Bajazet, prevent that mercy
Which every subject of your fortune finds.
War is the province of ambitious man,
Who tears the miserable world for empire;
Whilst our weak sex, incapable of wrong,
On either side claims privilege of safety.
Whoa! “Our weak sex”?!
Many items could be unpacked here. Today, I’m fascinated by what it means for a transgender person to ‘be.’ If there really were such thing as a ‘weaker’ and a ‘stronger’ sex, then transitioning would not be possible. Simple existence, regardless of any choice or action, refutes the concepts built into Nicholas Rowe’s mentality. And probably Helen Stevans’ as well.
Powerful indeed.
Beauty always intertwines with power. One beauty queen averted a Jewish genocide. More recently, another beauty queen repelled Russian invaders into Ukraine (actually, no, that never happened — but the viral video nudged American perceptions in the early days of the invasion). Another queen sort of conquered Rome — or ended the Roman Republic…
Chakrajutathib probably has no such ambitions for Miss Universe. Hopefully the pageant will be adapted, certain toxic aspects of pageantry mitigated to the extent they can be.
Women who competed know those toxic aspects intimately — body image, conformity, incredible work, self-harm, etc. But most of the world overlooks the bigger dangers — how pageantry can drive rejection of objective, scientific truth in favor of power — how that can corrode cultures that require us to judge based on considered thought rather than skin deep judgments.
Could beauty pageants beget authoritarianism? Perhaps. Consider which countries tend to win Miss Universe so far:
(1) the United States (which elected Donald Trump, a would-be authoritarian)
(2) Venezuela (taken over by Hugo Chavez — authoritarian regime)
(3) The Philippines (sliding back toward authoritarianism)
Four countries won Miss Universe three times: South Africa, Mexico, Sweden, and India are also countries that won three times. In three of those countries, surprising elements of authoritarianism persist — in South Africa, one win under apartheid, one under Jacob Zuma’s regime, and once more recently.
Sweden, of course is the exception — but they never won again once Donald Trump got involved. Coincidence?
