Apparently, the T & A show must go on.
Although some beauty queens threatened to boycott the 2002 Miss World contest in Nigeria with good reason, organizers say the show will continue and have simply pushed the event back one week. Contestants already have started arriving in Abuja to prepare for the Dec. 7 broadcast.
The traditional skinfest was marred when some contestants objected to the rulings of Nigerian Islamic courts that sentenced four people to death by stoning for extramarital sex and rape. Most notably, 30-year-old Amina Lawal bore a child out of wedlock and was sentenced to the same dastardly fate by a northern Nigerian court practicing Sharia law last March.
Finalists from Denmark, Spain, France, Austria, Iceland, Kenya, South Africa and Costa Rica announced they would boycott the country to protest Lawal’s fate. The Miss World Web site lists the United States as a participant in the contest, but there was no American contestant indicated for the 2002 event.
Miss South Africa, Vanessa Carreira, branded the contest an abomination and said the Lawal case was “a shame to the continent of Africa.” Prince Edward, who pulled out of attending a Miss World gala dinner last week, agreed with her sentiments.
Although beauty contests inherently objectify women as prizes and Barbie dolls with Vaseline on their teeth, the pageant’s worldwide broadcast only contributes to body image genocide that is snuffing out young girls’ self esteem across oceans. But by some stroke of luck, participants seem to have some degree of symbolic political clout; if only because they look great in bikinis.
Since the controversy began, CNN has reported that Nigerian officials insisted they will not permit the stoning sentences to be carried out, but they refused to intervene directly. When 82 contestants arrived last week, Dubem Oniya, Nigeria’s minister of state for foreign affairs, said the stoning issues had been resolved.
“You have no fears in this country,” Oniya told contestants who arrived last week. “Your safety is guaranteed. And I assure you, no Nigerian has been stoned or will be stoned.” Sure … nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
The Nigerian government has been guilty of double-speak on death sentences for months. Despite the rhetoric by officials (who are coincidentally gearing up for presidential, general and state elections next year), Lawal still does not have a date for a hearing. Her death sentence appeal was denied three months ago. And Amnesty International reports that punishments such as flogging and amputation are being handed down regularly in Sharia courts in northern Nigeria.
Even Lawal, likely pressured from her country’s bad public relations, pleaded for the contestants to participate. “Let them come,” she said through a translator. “I have no dreams. Only God can decide.”
Oh come on. It’s doubtful that a woman, who is living in shame, has an infant to care for and is facing imminent death, really, truly gives a rat’s derrière about a superficial beauty pageant.
The only good that can come out of the Miss World boycott is that some socially aware beauty queens have succeeded in bringing the condition of Muslim women worldwide to the front pages (at least in Europe). Until the world stops tolerating inhumane death penalty practices, at home and abroad, innocent women like Lawal will continue to play victim to barbaric paternalism.
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