Thursday, August 27, 2009

Venezuela pageant boot camp


Congratulations to Miss Venezuela ,Stefania Fernandez, for winning the Miss. Universe title last week!

This happens to be the second year the Venezuela has won the pageant, as Dayana Mendoza was crowned Miss Universe in 2008.

So it would be appropriate to assume that maybe South America is birthing beautiful babies who turn into pageant queens? According to BlackBook Mag and other various sources, Venezuela is quite obsessed with beating the pageant system- at all costs, "because winning pageants for Venezuela is like winning gold medals for China" (BBMag). The beauties are forced to go through a rigorous boot camp before getting to the stage. Some torturous activities include:

* Thousands of girls enter the Miss Venezuela competition and those who are chosen go to Osmel Sousa's "Miss Venezuela Academy", a beauty school in the mountains. The contestants are coached in fitness, speech, makeup, and modeling.
* The students' teachers are supposed to 'make them perfect'. Contestants go, go, go from eight in the morning to ten at night and the ones who are headed for international competitions have to stay for one year. One contestant said, "its exactly like a military school"
* Contestants are told to lose 20 pounds. They eat tuna, pineapple and green leaves, and must run, lift weights, hike, swim and do yoga every day. Weigh-ins are at the end of every week.
* Because plastic surgery is relatively cheap in this country, many contestants get nose jobs, liposuction and breast implant. The beauty school employs dental docs who have been known to cut girls' gums so that their teeth look bigger.

Ouch. That all sounds excruciatingly painful...and frankly, just way too much work. Even reading about those girls' fitness regiment makes us exhausted. Now if you could excuse us, we are going to grab a donut and then take a siesta. Adios!

2 comments:

  1. that is ridiculous and just another example of how pageants reinforce the sexual objectification of women... makes me so sad to read about

    ReplyDelete
  2. absolutely, and it completely reinforces the beauty myth as well.

    ReplyDelete