Ain't I a woman? Female landmine survivors' beauty pageants and the ethics of staring

Abstract

The paper addresses the recent flurry of beauty pageants as reintegration rituals which specifically aim at the symbolic integration of some stigmatized embodied identities: Miss HIV (Botswana, Uganda, Nigeria, Zimbabwe but also Russia), Mr or Ms AIDS (Kenya) and the most recent Miss Landmine (Angola, Cambodia). Common reactions to such events betray a most uncomfortable moral quandary: people seem torn between condemnation, repulsion and a very hesitant acknowledgement of the stated aim of positive re-integration. The paper explores this moral discomfort through its relations to a number of unresolved issues: the ambiguous status of beauty, the complex relationships between stigma and (its lack of) public representation, the multiple uses of beauty pageants as integrative rituals and the importance of beauty practices as a means to re-create meaning and dignity in distressing circumstances. Contestants’ interviews make it clear that they use the beauty pageants as one of the few – or maybe the only – site allowing for personal, social and political affirmation. The necessary collective dimension of these affirmations is linked to the socio-cultural and political contexts of countries just re-emerging from armed struggle.

Keywords:

• landmine survivors
• stigma
• beauty pageant
• ethics of staring

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Mr Morten Traavik for his comments and responses and his generous authorization of the use of his website resources (www.miss-landmine.org/).

Notes

1. This has been the subject of a documentary (Miss HIV, 2007).

2. In this regard, it is interesting to note that a wide range of laws, in the USA (‘ugly laws’) prohibited certain people from appearing in public places. Writes Garland-Thomson ‘An 1881 Chicago City Code, which stood for almost 100 years, captures the spirit of these laws: “Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, or an improper person to be allowed in or on the streets, highways, thoroughfares, or public places in this city, shall not therein or thereon expose himself to public view, under the penalty of a fine of $1 (about $20 today) for each offense” (Schweik, 2009, pp. 1–2)’ (quoted in Garland-Thomson, 2009, p. 72). Yet, the same era saw the popularity of freak shows soaring.

3. Cambodia has the highest rate of landmine victims in the world, one in every 300 people (Cambodia Landmine Victims, http://current.com/shows/vanguard/76317802_cambodias-landmine-victims.htm), with 4–6 millions landmine still unearthed. Two to three people a day are killed or injured in a landmine accident with a third of victims being children.

4. Winners and participants in Cambodia pageant received significantly less as the government ultimately refused to fund the pageant.

5. One of course could suspect the organizer, director Traavik Morten, of deliberate exploitation for his own career ambitions, or of unwitting collusion with racist/sexist ideologies or both. I cannot pronounce on this question which is anyhow outside the limits of this article. But I would answer by another question: if the contest ‘empowers’ women, as it seems it does, does it matter if the director also gains in terms of professional recognition?

6. Recently CODES has formed entered into partnership with Japan (2004, with the first class graduating in 2008).

7. That goal was fulfilled to an extent. Angola has since started a support program for Landmine victims and many of the contestants have found work within this program.

8. If ‘beauty’ is read too narrowly, it will not allow for visual activism. It also discounts many instances when the marginalized are moved whether by resentment or fury to the defiling of beauty (equated with privilege).