No Bollywood A-Listers, Not Much Interest. Nobody Cares About Beauty Pageants And We Are Glad
Over the weekend, well Saturday technically, the Femina Miss India World 2019 took place and Suman Rao from Rajasthan took the crown. The fact that you are in this article means that, even if not whole-heartedly, are mildly in agreement that beauty pageants are becoming less and less interesting to the general populace. There was a time when we would cancel all engagements, grab popcorn and a drink and be glued to our TV sets waiting to see who would be crowned and represent us on an international stage.
The thing is, we seem to have run out of f**** to give for beauty pageants, which is why I couldn’t even get myself to do a basic Google search to find out more information about Suman Rao. I mean, I know she’s from Rajasthan but that’s the extent of what I know. For the sake of this article and because I pride myself on being thorough, here’s what you need to know about her.
https://www.instagram.com/p/ByyL1FpJcLM/
Suman Rao is all of 20 years old and is a college student. The young girl loves dancing, a talent she picked to showcase in the talent round. The model is born in November of 1999, and she will represent India at the Miss World 2019 that takes place in December 2019 in Pattaya, Thailand.
https://www.instagram.com/p/ByPZNmFJOk8/
Okay, but let’s talk about why we think the interest in pageants has dipped. For starters, once she won, her Insta account got lots of followers but not enough to warrant any sort of excitement. She has about 27,500 followers now. Compare this to the #RCBGirl, literally an internet sensation from an IPL match who gained about 150,000 followers overnight. So it’s not like we don’t care about pretty girls, perhaps we care too much, but this simply didn’t get us all fawning.
The thing is, we are so glad everyone isn’t all gung-ho about beauty pageants. First of all, these women literally look like copies of each other. Their faces are all the same colour, the hair straightened to perfection. There simply isn’t any space for anyone’s personality to shine through. There’s no curly haired women, no one with even features that are too dramatically different. We bet people wouldn’t be able to pick one in a line up. Why they would be in a line up is a different question altogether.
Any traces of individuality are squashed under the supposed perfection and now it isn’t cutting ice with us. There isn’t anything else that promotes the concept of an ideal beauty like beauty pageants, and that’s just disturbing.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxhoN5Jl0nZ/
Before you throw your hands up in frustration, saying, come on, these are women who undergo intense training and all that, allow us to break it down for you. We know that they are taught how to walk, how to enunciate and even how to maybe exhale properly. Are they told that they are more than women who are beautiful on the outside? That it’s not how you look in a bikini that matters, but also how you hold a conversation? We doubt that very much. Which is why we are glad that these pageants are not garnering that many eyeballs.
https://www.instagram.com/p/ByxjLHhH20r/
The parameter to judge any event is by the number of Bollywood A-listers that make an appearance here and practically no one here was that. Yes, Katrina Kaif and Vicky Kaushal were there, but both were performing, thereby making their appearance a necessity. I mean, if you are going to be on stage and be paid for it, you have to turn up, it’s a given. Besides that, there was Neha Dhupia and Dia Mirza who don’t count as A-listers. There was also Huma Qureshi but again, she isn’t the top rung of Bollywood royalty. The only person holding fort for all of Bollywood was Karan Johar.
So, there is waning interest, if at all, in beauty pageants and we are just thrilled that the audience wants to see more than just women prancing around on stage. Thankfully, the bikini round has been done away with. What are your thoughts?
