The glitz and glamour of beauty pageants. How beautiful all of the girls look with their make up done, hair teased and credit cards maxed out for these ball room gown type dresses. However a beauty pageant held in Puerto Rico last week mixed a little bit of cruelty and jealously into the mix. This article from Knbc4 reported how contestant Ingrid Marie Rivera's make up and evening gown was coated with pepper spray. Why would someone only choose to douse Rivera's dress and no one else in the pageant? Because she was the biggest competition of course.
Rivera was crowned Miss World Caribbean in 2005 and was the top contender for this pageant in Puerto Rico. Some might she was too much of a threat. Rivera showed no sign of panic on stage and was smiling the whole time. However right after she had to take off all of her clothes and cover her body in ice bags due to the swelling rash. To add to the frustration, one of Rivera's bags was stolen during the swimsuit competition.
Officials in San Juan are investigating the case by interviewing everyone involved in the pageant, hoping to find who was responsible. The super intendent of the Puerto Rico Police Department said "I know there's rivalry between the contestants, but never to that extent".
Despite her rash, Rivera won the pageant and will represent Puerto Rico in the Miss Universe Pageant.
Jealously has an ugly face and has been seen in countless sporting events like the Tonya Harding case in which she was involved in the conspiracy against competitor Nancy Kerrigan. It's amazing what competitors will do in order to sabotage their competition.
Another blog, McCarthy 101 did another twist on this story about beauty pageants and spoke about the pain of being beautiful by also including the recent death of Kanye West's mother after having plastic surgery. As quoted on her blog Cara writes
"I can understand the desire to win, but these tactics are too extreme, even inIt's amazing to see just how far some people will go to either get the perfect body or win a competition; an example of jealousy rearing it's ugly head.
the apparently nasty world of competitive pageantry. Why are women so dead set
on hating each other? Why is it that whenever I enter a room with women inside I
feel as if I’m being judged and inspected to find my flaws. As if, by
discovering what is wrong with me they can feel better about themselves. Its
absurd. We shouldn’t’ be our own worst enemy. We should be helping each other
out instead of pushing each other down."
3 comments:
I totally agree with your point that competition (especially in the realm of pageantry) has a tendancy to get real ugly real quick. Tonya Harding acted like an outright lunatic to keep Nancy Karegan from competing against her on the ice- but that insanity afforded her lots of media attention which she desperately craved. I'm still a bit confused about Ms. Puerto Rico as it seems damn-near impossible that her clothes were covered in pepper spray during the competition- in the footage that I saw she appeared composed and well, pageant-like. I think pageants are a strange scenario anyway- anytime beauty becomes competitive women will grow claws. Also, there is an article in today's New York Times that schools wants to ban vending machines, sugary, fatty foods altogether in schools and replace it with a nutritious meal plan. Thought you might like to check it out!
Society is evolving into a place where the only thing that matters is physical appearance. Look at the plastic surgery revolution and the mother of kanye west. Some people will pay any price for the perfect face or body. Personally, I think it's sad that society's standards and ideals have decreased. People should be more concerned with helping the less fortunate instead of paying credit on their facelift. In a Q&A with Hugh Hefner I asked him how he felt about young women wanting plastic surgery to look like his playmates. He feels that if young women are using cosmetic surgery to improve their appearance, he supports it. I believe that if this general mind-set does not change then more incidents like the Puerto Rico competition are inevitable.
Competition, especially beauty competitions, could get pretty ugly as thatsamoret had mentioned earlier. I mean just look at the attack on Nancy Kerrigan back in 1994 and for what, ice skating? I'm not surprised that an insecure beauty pageant contestant would try to sabotage their biggest competition. It just shows how low they were willing to stoop for a silly materialistic crown because they couldn't win with their own beauty. This is truly another sad story of what our world is coming to... =(
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