So called progressiveness and our reality

After oil, the area where competition between Venezuela and the United States reaches its peak is beauty pageants. If you look up the data, you will see that in competitions like Miss Universe and Miss World, Venezuela and the United States engage in intense rivalry. So far, the United States has won Miss World 9 times, the highest number, while Venezuela is second with 7 wins. In Miss Universe, Venezuela holds the highest number with 6 titles. In Miss International, Venezuela has won a record 8 times. Altogether, among the top-tier beauty pageants—the so-called “Big Six” (including Miss World, Miss Universe, and four others)—Venezuela has won a total of 24 international crowns, the highest of any country. In other words, Venezuela is widely recognized as a powerhouse of beauty pageants.

This is not a trivial matter. Venezuelan society as a whole is deeply obsessed with beauty pageants. Even beyond global competitions, regional pageants generate fierce competition. Parents dream that their young daughters will one day walk the catwalk, captivate judges, win large sums of money, and support their families. If women’s clothing and the public display of beauty are taken as markers of a “progressive” society, then Venezuela would rank at the very top. In Venezuela, children are dressed in swimsuits and made to walk the catwalk in front of thousands of people. Photos and videos of these events would likely be flagged by Facebook or Instagram’s new algorithms, as they effectively serve as material consumed by pedophiles. Yet Venezuelans feel no remorse about this.

The child who is placed into beauty competitions grows up accepting this life as normal and even desirable. Venezuela is an intensely sexualized society. Beauty pageants attract millions of television viewers. Young and old alike watch without distinction. Parents feel no shame watching their own daughters in minimal clothing; instead, they feel pride. When the MeToo movement erupted in Hollywood in 2018, international beauty pageants like Miss Universe removed the swimsuit segment. However, Venezuela’s regional beauty contests paid no attention to this change. They continued “business as usual” with swimsuits intact. There was not even a discussion about removing them. On the contrary, having beautiful women walk in swimsuits is considered the most practical and essential part of a beauty contest—something that cannot be discarded.

Winning regional beauty contests often brings financial rewards that help contestants move further ahead. They may be able to afford breast implants, cosmetic surgery to enhance their appearance, or move into an apartment instead of continuing to live in poverty.

One beauty pageant participant wrote in her memoir:

“I quickly realized that to enter the Miss Venezuela competition, I would have to sell my body to secure a sponsor,” she wrote. “Not everyone had to go that far, but that was my reality.”

Such allegations are common—stories of having sex with older men to finance gowns or pay for surgeries. Yet due to the immense hype surrounding beauty pageants in Venezuela, these accusations rarely have lasting impact.

Doctors, lawyers, highly educated women, and women in stable professions eagerly participate in beauty contests whenever they get the opportunity. They believe that winning through beauty will make them more powerful. And in Venezuela, this belief is not unfounded. There are records of beauty pageant winners entering elections and winning positions as mayors or even becoming leaders of opposition parties at the national level.

And yet—despite being such a “progressive” society where women are fully free to display their physical beauty, where beauty is not viewed negatively but embraced respectfully—what use are these beautiful women in Venezuela’s current condition? Tell me. In a country filled with beautiful women, where a president can be taken to the United States within hours through a raid, what good did all this “progressive” womanhood do? Other than satisfying male sexual desire, what purpose do they serve? Have the women who won beauty pageants or brought medals to Venezuela contributed any real power to the nation? Despite having so many “progressive” women, can this country ever erase this humiliation? It cannot. History will never be fixed this way.

If exposing sexuality, reducing clothing, and winning by performing seductive techniques in front of men in the name of freedom truly contributed to a nation’s real development, then there would be no need for so many research laboratories. Women are born with beauty—but if exposing that beauty could save the world from danger, humanity would abandon all work and devote itself entirely to women. But reality is different. You can open all forms of education to women—music, dance, ballet—make them free. They will learn, sing, dance, and win on global stages as artists. But at the end of the day, all of this is worthless in the face of a superpower’s missile. The entire investment becomes futile.

This is why religious leaders or Islamists in such countries oppose the unrestricted exposure of women—not out of ignorance, but realism. They want national resources invested in areas that strengthen the country’s real power. Sitting women down with Rabindranath and harmoniums makes both the women and the state more inert. Sending them into Lux-style beauty contests ultimately turns them into objects of male consumption, contributing nothing to nation-building. Condemning this is not backwardness—it is realism. This has nothing to do with progressivism; it ultimately has everything to do with sexuality.

For poor countries, this so-called progressivism creates further confusion. They think: “We don’t need missiles; our women can wear whatever they want. We don’t need weapons research; our women can make independent decisions. We don’t need an independent foreign policy; our women can dress freely.” The entire state policy becomes women-centric. Poor countries then believe their level of women’s freedom is so high that even superpowers like the United States praise them. “Who can stop us now?”

Meanwhile, the United States is happy. Poor countries have been made to center all their thinking around women—so they will remain preoccupied with women and have no opportunity to focus on anything else.

Notes: Two screenshots of reports related to the hype surrounding Venezuelan beauty pageants have been shared—one from The Guardian and the other from NBC. In The Guardian report, look at the image of a little girl in a pink dress lifting her leg upward while wearing high heels. She may not even realize that she is being shaped into fuel for a sexualized society.