Beauty pageants must go away

I read a lot of local social media as I live on Cape Beton Island where knowing what it going on is essential.

Seriously.

Cape Breton is a truly beautiful place.

But the population is declining, child poverty is way too high, and jobs are scarce. And so most of us who live here feel a kind of obligation to keep our eye on the ball — the ghost-town ball.

We love living here, don’t get me wrong.

I often write about wacky development ideas that are proposed in the name of creating “jobs” — the quotation marks indicate that these jobs are usually seasonal and not the kind that you can have and still eat well. Or sleep under a roof that you pay for in some way.

Yesterday, though, I saw that a local young woman has been lifted to the ranks of Miss World Canada.

Beauty pageants have to go away.

Soon.

Why?

1. Little kids — pre-adolesence — want to go on diets so that they can be thinner and look more like the beautiful people our culture holds up as icons. Study.
2. The Guardian published an article that tells us that more than half of young girls between 14 and 16 are unhappy with how they look. And this should make us sad/angry/act.
3. The same article tells us that more than half of 7 to 11-year-old girls wear make-up.
4. Donald Trump — yes, the president of the Unites States — once sent away a young woman who was to take lunch orders for him and his colleagues because she was not pretty enough.

So, enough with the trophies for being pretty.

And more of the mocking of the culture that tries to make us think that if we do not look like a Barbie doll we don’t matter. Like these comics.

Oh, I almost forgot. I posted a polite comment about how beauty pageants kind of stomp all over girl power on Cape Breton University’s website and the powers that lurk behind the screen deleted my comment.

When I asked why, the anonymous gate keeper told me that it wasn’t appropriate to say anything negative about beauty pageants on a post that was celebrating someone winning one.

Yeah.