Beauty pageants do more good than harm

First to refute, In PhPr's first reason was supposed to show how BPs dehumanize women. While I would agree that this would probably be a bad thing, PhPr never explained how merely making your body into an object makes you dehumanized. Instead of showing this necessary logical link to support his assertion, PhPr instead made the false analogy that implied that participating in a pageant is akin to hitting yourself in the head with a hammer, without explaining why. Let's think about the implied argument here… If objectifying your body is so damaging, then we should not put our bodies on display for sculptures, Olympic ice-skating judge panels, or even our own doctors. Our bodies are objects. If you prick us, we will bleed. And what is wrong with utilizing these physical tools for the betterment of ourselves and out society? His second reason was really nothing more than an extension of the first. But did he ever explain how it is that men who judge women's bodies and faces in a pageant will then judge all women in that way… or how these men would otherwise not have done this anyway? Are there men who judge women exclusively by their appearance? Of course, but those men have been around since before beauty pageants. Just because they are wrong, and they watch pageants, doesn't mean the pageant made them do it. To say otherwise is to say that there was no violence before Hollywood invented the action film. And the truth is that many men who do actively judge the women in a pageant will not turn around and say "well, those women were getting judged like that, so I guess all the OTHER women must be the same way", and then forget that they have more to them than their appearance. After all, a doctor does not start giving surgery to his mother when they meet for Mother's Day. PhPr's 3rd reason is actually the details of his 1st and 2nd reasons (in other words, they are all one reason). Now it is clear that 99% of women are either anorexic, bulimic, or have committed suicide…according to him. In addition to that leap in logic, he forgets that "society's standards" are not a monolith. Society has room for more than one standard, after all. Plus-sized models, have won pageants. Short models have as well. The first time people saw Kate Moss, they said there were surprised because she was thinner than the other models, but then they said, well, she knows how to hide her size when she needs to, and also how to show that thin and short can be beautiful in its own way as well. Suddenly mainstream media can show tiny and plus sized girls standing side by side with the older standards. Thanks to these pageants, our acceptance of bodies can grow. Women who had been Anerexic, such as Kate Dillon, only stopped hating themselves after they saw plus-sized models finding ways of showing their bodies in beautiful ways so that they can compete and win in beauty pageants. His 4th reason was that these pageants are the cause of mental illness (again, this is also his 3rd reason). If we apply his logic to everyday life, then we should not *ever* choose to eat chocolate ice cream, because people will assume that Strawberry will be a worthless loser, and, and we should all get pink like strawberry. But wait a minute… if a woman gets rejected by one man, does that mean that all men hate her? Different strokes for different folks. You don't have to be a loser, just because you are not the number one winner. Will they sometimes feel like a loser? Yes, but we all feel that way sometimes. Last I checked, people have been judged by their beauty since pre-history, and have been married and rejected by this criterion, among others. If there were no beauty pageants, would this fact change? He also forgets that there is a context. Yes they are judged by their beauty, but it is a beauty pageant! If you see land with a factory on it, you will not suddenly become so biased that you will assume that all land should be used for industry, and start picketing against residential zones and parks. In PhPr's final reason, he admits that there are "many places and ways and opportunities for women to get ahead by using their intelligence and skill and to be treated as equal human beings." No kidding. When men and women want to judge someone by their brains, they will watch Jeopardy, a lecture, or a chess match. But to assert that women will stop wanting to do these things simply because of beauty pageants is not only unfounded, but flies in the face of history. Since the invention of the beauty pageant we have seen more women entering higher education then men. To summerize this refutation, I will state that PhPr could not find any harm for beauty pageants, but instead listed all the bad effects of women suffering self esteem problems, problems that have always existed in all women – and all men, since pre-history, since everyday life has us competing for mates anyway, one of the criterion for mate competition being beauty. Nothing new here. Now for my second argument, II) if the government tries to shame desire for beauty into not existing, then the government will fail because it is fighting human nature. This will make the government look like weak fascists who over regulate, but it will also make beauty pageants move underground, where they would become more old fashioned and degrading. If the government REALLY succeeds in brainwashing people into pretending that beauty doesn't exist in public, then people will be too ashamed to talk about their problems relating to beauty. Many people who are so crazy about becoming beautiful are risking their lives by becoming anorexic of bulimic, and they should be able to tell people about their problems without fearing shame over the stigma the government is trying to make on people who try to be beautiful.