Oaxaca has become the first State of Mexico to approve that beauty pageants and contests such as Miss Universe or Miss World involve symbolic violence against women.
The decision of the local Congress does not prohibit these events, but it will prevent public funds from being allocated to them as tourist promotion campaigns or official advertising.
The deputies have agreed that the contests where the body and beauty of women are evaluated promote "sexist stereotypes" that discriminate the physical characteristics of the contestants.
From now on, the State Law of Access of Women to a Life Free of Gender Violence in Oaxaca includes the prohibition of using any public resource for acts where the physique of women of any age is evaluated.
The initiative to consider these events symbolic violence has been promoted by Magaly López Domínguez, a deputy from Morena who has also taken up the fight against junk food in the State.
More information
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Miss England and Miss France break the topics of beauty pageants
Oaxaca's decision is announced in the midst of the transformation wave of beauty pageants. At the last Miss World, held in 2019 before the pandemic, a black woman made history by taking the crown. That same year, another five Afro-descendant women won in other competitions. A year earlier, Ángela Ponce, the young Spanish transsexual who won the contest in Spain for Miss Universe and who later participated in the global final in Bangkok, emerged as an icon of diversity and activism. Swe Zin Htet, the representative of Myanmar in the Miss Universe competition, also broke the mold and was the first miss in this competition to openly declare herself homosexual, something punishable by law in her country.
However, there is still a lot of controversy surrounding these events. Veronika Didusenko, a 24-year-old model who was crowned Miss Ukraine in 2018, was stripped of the title four months later because organizers learned she had a son. "According to the rules of the Miss Ukraine national beauty pageant," the organization said in a statement, "the model must meet the following requirements: not be or have been married and not have children." In many competitions, it is still customary to ask the contestants for a list of physical attributes, which is what is awarded - specific chest measurements, heights not less than 1.70 meters, and a long etcetera -, in addition to certain personal characteristics such as not having been mothers.
In Venezuela, at the beginning of the #MeToo era, some former queens denounced the harassment experiences they experienced in the contest.
Migbelis Castellanos, representative of Venezuela in Miss Universe 2014, told Osmel Sousa, the former manager of the contest organization, of having asked him to obtain the sponsorship of a businessman or government official in exchange for sex to pay for the expenses of his candidacy.
That same year, in 2018, the Miss America pageant dropped the swimsuit category due to the wave of complaints of harassment of women.
Miss Mexico 2021, stained by the scandal of a covid outbreak
The year the pageant was to resume after the first peak of the pandemic, Mexico chose its beauty queen amid a coronavirus outbreak in the pageant.
The Secretary of Health of the State of Chihuahua, Eduardo Fernández Herrera, reported that there is an ongoing investigation to clarify the circumstances of the infections after an anonymous notice to the event organization team.
The organization of the Miss Mexico pageant brought forward the final coronation date, but by then it was too late.
Herrera pointed out that having warned from the first suspicion of covid-19 among the candidates, a greater contagion could have been avoided by applying the corresponding tests and isolating the positive cases.
In total, 16 infected women were detected among the 32 contestants.
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