Miss Landmine Angola 2008
Angola has landmines throughout the county that have ripped apart thousands of lives from their destruction. One way that the society has decided to help recover its dignity and beauty is through a pageant for women who have been hurt by these mines. You can visit the very Hollywood-inspired Miss Landmine Angola 2008 site here with all its palm trees, pools, and beaches — alongside mutilated survivors of landmine explosions wearing bathing suits.
This event is empowering for the contestants and encapsulating and perhaps altogether difficult to understand for outsiders. If you read some of the contestants bios, you might actually tear up. For example:
Her dream job is “Will do whatever she gets” and she got injured “running away from soldiers attacking her village.”
Here’s the pageant’s manifest:
THE MISS LANDMINE MANIFESTO
(in no particular order)
* Female pride and empowerment.
* Disabled pride and empowerment.
* Global and local landmine awareness and information.
* Challenge inferiority and/or guilt complexes that hinder creativity-
historical, cultural, social, personal, African, European.
* Question established concepts of physical perfection.
* Challenge old and ingrown concepts of cultural cooperation.
* Celebrate true beauty.
* Replace the passive term ‘Victim’ with the active term ‘Survivor’
For people who hate beauty contests, I wonder where they fall in thinking about this one. Discuss below.
- - - -
Posted on November 18, 2007
Filed Under Contests and Sweepstakes, Cultural Symbols, War |
Comments
Leave a Reply
-
Home
