The pageants of Colombia provide a distilled environment for
examining the nature of beauty and how we cope with adversity. Set against a
backdrop of poverty and decades of armed conflict, nowhere are the contests
more ubiquitous and revered. In these carefully scripted shows of fantasy,
beauty as a concept, commodity and singular goal is stripped to its raw
elements. There is no ambiguity or pretense that anything else matters.
The queens are celebrities. Icons of a rigidly defined ideal,
the contestants highlight the conflated relationship between beauty and
attraction. Many of them seem familiar, stirring recollections of the same
perfect features seen elsewhere, along with the identical flirtatious laughter,
mock surprise and relentless optimism. In their quest for adoration, they erase
all traces of individuality.
While the inherent objectification of the contests and the
values they convey to young women often provoke outrage and ridicule elsewhere,
in the Colombian context the issue is more complicated. The millions who pack
stadiums and follow dozens of national contests on live television often have a
vicarious relationship with the queens, clinging to the fantasy of magically
transcending poverty. The queens themselves often claim to be working the
situation to their advantage, even as they perpetuate a mindset which
ultimately limits their opportunities.
The popularity of the pageants ebbs and flows with the level
of violence in the country. The contests project an image of normalcy and
vitality in the face of social upheaval and fear, a refusal to be defined by
the violence or to live as if besieged. In a country rife with conflict, the
pageants are a form of both denial and defiance.