This similarity between beauty pageants and dance competitions really got me thinking. Why is it that the public sees pageants as a horrible, superficial activity and not dance competitions. My friend had a great experience with pageants that enabled her to make friends and feel good about herself. I on the other hand think back to competitions and remember crying when I was fourteen because I felt fat next to the rail thin dancers next to me. Even though my teachers were not in it for the gold, I still felt bad about myself when I didn’t do well, even though the whole thing was kind of silly to me.
Why does society view one thing as bad and another as good when they are so similar and both have their ups and downs? I decided to ask my friend what she thought about this.
She basically said what I thought she would: it’s wrong for people to think this way but that’s just the way it is. Judges at both competitions are judging the people on the same thing; being perfect at what they are doing. She remembered once at a pageant doing a “T” (pageant code for walking down a “t” shaped runway) wearing a skirt that flipped in a certain way and thinking of it as choreography. She took steps on certain beats and flipped the skirt on counts. This is the same as doing a routine but the public sees it as shallow because modeling is not recognized as an art the way that dance is.
We talked about how the media focuses on the bad side of pageants like the eating disorders and kids who learn poor messages from them. The thing is, I know plenty of dancers with eating disorders and plenty of dancers who think that they are God’s gift to the world because they are good dancers.