The futility of Beauty contests

Beauty contests are popular in many parts of the world. The biggest, Miss World, has been running annually since 1951. It attracts a worldwide audience of over 3 billion viewers. Are beauty contests relevant in the 21st Century when women want to be judged by intelligence and accomplishment rather than appearance? Do they perpetuate the subjugation of women?
Beauty contests promote an ideal of women beauty that most women cannot attain. Societal acceptance of this ideal can harm women by dieting, eating disorders and cosmetic surgery or simply by making them feeling inadequate and ugly.
Women in beauty contests are judged by their physical appearance rather than any other quality they possess. Judging women but not men, primarily on their looks contributes to the subjugation of women because other qualities such as intelligence are not seen as part of ideal femininity. The masculine ideal, while can also be damaging to men, tends to be expressed in much wider and less restrictive forms.
Beauty contests promote an image of female beauty that is culturally specific and western. No matter how many African or Asian women win the Miss world, they can only do so if they take part in the swimsuit competition which may not be considered appropriate dress in their culture. There were demonstrations in against miss world by feminists and Hindu nationalists when it was held in Bangalore, India in 1996, riots in Kaduna, Nigeria over Miss World in 2002 that left more than 200 dead and forced the contest to relocate to London.
Beauty contests fail to challenge harmful political attitudes about women. Despite paying lip service to feminist concepts such as empowerment, they do not further the liberation of women. Indeed by reinforcing looks as the most important female quality they harm women liberation.
It is important to note that the organizers of Miss World 2002 had no concerns holding the contest in Nigeria at the same time as a high profile case in which a woman was due to be stoned to death for adultery which in my view exposes the competitions’ hypocrisy.