Here’s Chloe Marshall, the size 16 Miss England contestant who’s been getting all sorts of attention lately, in the pageant’s bikini photo call.
It’s a cute Cinderella story, that’s for sure, but I’d be lying if I said I looked at this girl and saw physical beauty. Does that mean she is not a kind, intelligent, valuable human being? No, absolutely not. Does she really have a place in the Miss England beauty pageant? I don’t think so. Like, let’s get honest: there are plenty of awards to be won in this world for kindness and intelligence and making other important contributions to society. And then there are beauty pageants. And I don’t think everyone has to be anorexic, but there are very healthy ways, through diet and exercise, to achieve a body in line with our society’s definition of beauty. This girl does not have a proportional body, and has clearly not gone to much of an effort to achieve one, so why does she get to compete in the Miss England pageant? Are we giving a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize to Saddam Hussein, just to prove that there are many different interpretations of “peace”? No, we’re not, because we, as the Western World, have come to a general consensus on what defines “peace,” and Saddam Hussein’s actions don’t fit into that, so we’re not going to award him a peace prize. Similarly, we’ve come to a general consensus on what defines beauty (you think these bikini pictures are going to end up on posters on the walls of teenage boys?), and beauty pageants ought to be judged as such. Just my two cents.
But props to her for having the courage to be there as a role model and take all the press, good and bad, that comes along with it.
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