If you’re looking to enter the Miss England competition, the website helpfully informs you that ‘its not just about looking good in a swimsuit anymore [sic]’. My pedantic self wants to point out that it’s evidently not about good punctuation either, but I don’t think that’s the core issue at hand. 

In recent years, beauty pageants have sought in various ways to throw off their reputation as shallow (and often seedy) institutions. Gone are the days, we are told, of bikinis and stilettos, manicures and stuttered calls for ‘world peace’. The latest winner of Miss Cambridgeshire, Carina Tyrell, recently wrote in this paper that ‘Miss England judges the whole person’. She even goes as far as trying to argue that people should be judged based on ‘their overall personality’. Heavens.

The modern Miss World competition now boasts of the importance of sporting prowess, environmental awareness – and charity. Each ‘Miss’ is challenged to raise as much money as possible for the (hair-raisingly named) Beauty With a Purpose, Miss World’s charitable arm. Quite the clincher. If an organisation raises money for charity, can it possibly have negative ramifications? Well yes, unfortunately. However, in this particular case I would argue that charity acts as a crucial distraction from – even a smokescreen against – a discussion about the issues surrounding female bodies in the public arena, and the role of beauty pageants therein.

The Miss England competition may have raised a fair bit for charity, and that’s all well and good. But waving the charity flag every time someone questions the intentions behind beauty pageants has been a good decoy from engaging in a real debate. So let’s leave the charitable contributions to one side, and delve a little deeper into what pageants actually involve.

First off, I don’t find beauty pageants offensive purely because I’m a woman. What I do find offensive is the subtle insinuation that because I am a less physically attractive woman – let’s just say someone who is not going to win a title in a beauty pageant any time soon – my other qualities are therefore diminished.

This is not overtly stated by the participants or organisers of these pageants. But even though they continue to trot out the sound bites about inner beauty and the significance of your achievements, the fundamental quality being judged is outer beauty. An average looking woman – let alone an ugly woman – is not eligible. In fact, to be selected to participate in Miss England all you have to do is ‘send a snapshot of yourself with your age and occupation’. Not a list of your achievements. Not even an overview of your plan for world peace. Just a picture of your face.

Is there is any need for a competition that effectively ranks women according to their looks? Doesn’t our society do that anyway? It’s by now an old trope, but the largest picture of a woman in the highest circulation newspapers in this country is of one who is topless, slim, and pretty. The most famous women in the world – barring the Queen, who is famous by birth – are screen actresses and pop stars who have to be physically attractive to gain recognition. The measures of attractiveness women face in these industries are higher than those facing men. And good looking girls are likely to bypass their more talented, albeit less attractive, rivals. Can’t the same to be said about Miss England?

In politics, the same generally goes. Men aren’t expected to be good looking to get ahead. When Theresa May, the current Home Secretary, lost weight last year, it was instantly rumoured that she had her eyes on the Prime Minister’s job. Surely she would have to make herself more attractive to attain such heights – the Daily Mail described her transformation as a ‘miraculous makeover’. It turned out she had Type 1 diabetes, and had lost weight for health reasons. But losing the weight didn’t harm her career prospects, the Mail was adamant to maintain.

I don’t think any more examples are necessary. Our society values good looking women, who generally fit a pretty narrow mould. The ramifications of this for women is that they are told (implicitly or explicitly) that they should strive to look good in order to seek success. For women more so than men, prosperity and attraction are locked in a dangerous embrace. My issue with beauty pageants is that they target young women in particular, and along the way reinforce this connection between looking good and being successful in a very pointed fashion.

Pageants additionally strive for a very a particular type of beauty – primped, heavily made up, taut, glitzy, smiley. For me, it is an aesthetic that inherently devalues women’s voices. The persona fostered by pageants is vacuous. That might seem strange given that I am writing in response to a pageant queen who is also a Cambridge medical student, but I feel that her appeal in the world of Miss England is her very surprising presence. The current Miss England title-holder on the other hand, Kirsty Heslewood from North London, spends a considerable amount of time promoting diet supplements on her Facebook page. She did run the London Marathon and raise £2,000 along the way – but I don’t want that to close down the debate about what she stands for.

In the world of Miss England, inner beauty is built on a bedrock of symmetrical features and slim waists, glossy hair and high heels. I may also be at Cambridge like Carina Tyrell, but my achievements will not be recognised by Miss World. For that I am thankful – I hope they don’t need to be processed by such an institution to be deemed of worth.