Why do you think beauty pageants lead to exploitation of women?

we're having a debate about this and i dont think i have enough or sufficient idea for thisWhy do you think beauty pageants lead to exploitation of women?
Beauty pageants don't lead to exploitation of women. Just as football games don't lead to the exploitation of men.





This belief is typical feminist noise.Why do you think beauty pageants lead to exploitation of women?
A woman can only be exploited if she allows it. PERIOD.


Focus on your own goals. Who cares if another woman has different goals. It is truly no one's business what makes one happy.
- presents a one-dimensional view of women


- worships a beauty ideal unachievable by most





'Adel' is right: beauty pagents are in the business of exploiting women.


Just imagine a male beauty pagent - men would find it ridiculous. So what's the difference?





The difference is that the 'male gaze'.


'The concept of gaze (often also called the gaze or, in French, le regard), in analysing visual culture, is one that deals with how an audience views the people presented. The concept of the gaze became popular with the rise of postmodern philosophy and social theory and was first discussed by 1960s French intellectuals, namely Michel Foucault's description of the medical gaze and Lacan's analysis of the gaze's role in the mirror stage development of the human psyche. This concept is extended in the framework of feminist theory, where it can deal with how men look at women, how women look at themselves and other women, and the effects surrounding this.'





Gaze and feminist theory


Laura Mulvey, in her essay ';Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema';, introduced the concept of the gaze as a symptom of power asymmetry, hypothesizing about what she called the ';male gaze.'; The theory of the male gaze has been hugely influential in feminist film theory and in media studies.


The defining characteristic of the male gaze is that the audience is forced to regard the action and characters of a text through the perspective of a heterosexual man; the camera lingers on the curves of the female body, and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events. The male gaze denies women agency, relegating them to the status of objects. The female reader or viewer must experience the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male.


Mulvey's essay was one of the first to articulate the idea that sexism can exist not only in the content of a text, but in the way that text is presented, and in its implications about its expected audience.


Some theorists also have noted the degrees to which persons are encouraged to gaze upon women in advertising, sexualizing the female body even in situations where female body has nothing to do with the product being advertised.'
I don't.


What a lot of women, especially the hardcore feminists don't realize is that men are visually excited far more than women are. Visuals do matter to women, but not to the extent that it does to men. It's a matter of primeval instincts. For men the features of a woman matter more than the rest of the woman's being because it all goes to the idea of ';fertility';, and the abilities of the womb. This goes to procreation of the species. Like it or not that is how the pageants live, on the primeval instincts of the main audience, ';the men';.


Of course aesthetics have a lot to do with it as well.


So the exploitation comes from the deep desire of the male to procreate. It's so simple but few are willing to accept such an answer. For a variety of reasons the simplicity of the answer is refused.
It depicts women as being valuable only for their beauty ... males in general are not judged as being outstanding for thier appearance - strength, brains, character, are all seen as desirable for men to have, but for women it's possible ot become ';Miss World' by having an attractive appearance, no matter what values you hold or what good you have done the world, how clever you are or how much money you have made. It says women's value is determined by others.
Think your debating about a subject that is completely unfounded and to be honest stupid.


Beauty pageants DON'T lead to the exploitation of women...
Does it lead to exploitation? Actually, beauty pageants themselves are exploitation... think about it, it's just treating the women like they're physical objects, and it may cause women to harm their health to get into a certain body shape.





Edit: To 'Rebel Yell' - you seem to not know what exploitation means - exploitation can be subtle. There's some big businesses who want to squeeze out money here, and probably want to soon start a preteen beauty pageant if they could also.





There's another issue also - and it's a bigger societal issue - which has to do with sexuality... and let me just say that creating this hyper-sexual atmosphere, where physical beauty seems to be placed on such a high pedestal, isn't so healthy for society overall.
Objectification of women and girls.





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