Monday, April 19, 2010

Friday, April 16, 2010

Pageants

Beauty pageants, like many other social rituals reinforce traditional ideas of gender, beauty and perfection. Beyond this role of reinforcement, pageants serve as a symbol- a symbol of the experience of a woman.
There are moments reminiscent of childhood hopes, purity and beauty. Relationships tangled with jealousy, competition and resentment reveal themselves through the pageant process.
For me, these moments represent something larger- the experience of being a woman and trying to understand ideas of perfection.