Tendai Ruben Mbofana
A few days ago, I came across a news report of an ecstatic Zimbabwean beauty queen returning home from an international pageant.
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She was visibly thrilled over her achievement, and I was particularly touched by her mother, who stood beside her close to tears of joy.
Yet, behind the triumphant arrival and warm family celebration, the spectacle brought back a question that has haunted me for years.
Are these beauty pageants really about intellect, leadership, and a noble mission, or are they simply glamorized exploitation and the sanitized sexualization of women?
The modern pageant industry insists it has evolved.
Under banners like “beauty with a purpose” or “beauty with brains,” organizers frame these spectacles as platforms for female empowerment and social change.
But this script is far from original.
Decades ago, Hugh Hefner sold a similar narrative through Playboy, convincing young women that posing nude or serving mostly male clients at his clubs as half-naked Bunnies was a radical act of personal confidence and female agency.
Despite the fierce debates surrounding his empire, there was no denying the underlying reality: these young women were being used to satisfy male sexual pleasures and patriarchal fantasies.
Pageants operate on a remarkably similar frequency.
Stripped of their polished marketing, these contests remain fundamentally designed to feed a deep desire for external validation—a demand engineered by a patriarchal society that stubbornly measures a woman’s ultimate value by her physical appearance.
The history of pageants makes this origin clear.
Born as simple seaside swimsuit displays designed to attract tourists and showcase ideal female bodies, the industry faced mounting cultural backlash in the late twentieth century.
To survive, organizers introduced intelligence tests, onstage Q&A rounds, and compulsory charity projects.
This “beauty with a purpose” narrative was created not as a core mission, but as a public relations shield to sanitize an industry under siege.
This raises a deeply troubling question: why should charity work and changing the world ever be conditional on a woman’s physical appearance?
Tying social impact to body measurements and facial symmetry sends a damaging message to the millions of women who do not fit narrow, Eurocentric, or commercialized standards of attractiveness.
It quietly tells the “unpretty” woman that her potential to lead, inspire, or heal her community is somehow secondary, crushing her self-esteem and undermining her confidence to make her own mark on the world.
Genuine empowerment does not require a sash, a crown, or a panel of judges scoring a walk in high heels.
The illusion of this philanthropic facade becomes even clearer when we look at the actual legacy of these pageants.
The vast majority of beauty queens fail to establish any lasting charity initiatives once their tiaras are passed to the next winner.
Their humanitarian efforts routinely evaporate the moment the spotlight fades and the reign ends.
This reality exposes the uncomfortable truth: the vast majority of participants are not genuinely driven by philanthropy, but by the pursuit of personal endorsement, social status, and vanity.
The compulsory charity work is treated as little more than a temporary inconvenience—a necessary tax paid to secure the crown.
Beyond the superficial glitz, the history of major pageants is littered with concrete scandals that expose their true, predatory nature.
In 2023, the Miss Universe Organization was forced to sever ties with its Indonesian franchise after contestants reported being forced into invasive, unauthorized “body checks” where they were ordered to strip in front of male organizers.
That same year, prominent titleholders like Miss USA Noelia Voigt abruptly resigned, citing toxic work environments, severe mental health strain, and unaddressed sexual harassment complaints.
Even after winning, these “queens” are subjected to strict non-disclosure agreements, gagged from expressing their true opinions on real-world issues, and forced to stick to bland, pre-approved corporate scripts.
This obsessive need to censor and script these women completely demolishes the industry’s manufactured “beauty with brains” mythology.
It proves that the organizers themselves do not actually believe these women have intellect or independent thought—they demand docile, compliant ornaments who will passively perform for male pleasure without disrupting the lucrative, sexualized illusion.
We must stop dressing up the objectification of women as social progress.
Until we detach a woman’s capacity to serve humanity from her willingness to be judged on a stage, pageants will remain nothing more than sanitized parade routes for patriarchal approval.
Real empowerment builds enduring change, not temporary glamour.
True female worth needs no panel of judges.
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com