Miss Captive Beauty 2010

I’m sort of, but not really, torn about the recent Miss Captive Beauty 2010 (Belleza Cautiva) , a beauty contest for female prison inmates held in Juarez, Mexico. There’s some problems with how the media has handled the event. Some sites, such as Guanabee.com , present the contest as a step forward for prison systems. And to be sure, there are dozens, if not hundreds of examples of abuses committed against women in the prison system . I’m all for allowing the inmates to participate and help organize events while in prision. I think creativity is a basic human right; they deserve to compete in contests as a way to express themselves.

But a beauty contest? This smacks of lookism. Fifteen attractive inmates were selected by prison staff to participate. Only fifteen women were able to get the chance to get out of their cells and excercise some extra human rights. What about the conventionally unattractive prisoners? And you can’t tell me there weren’t some seedy politics at play. There was a reason those 15 were chosen, and the other 600 inmates were not.

However, lookism is just the tip of the iceberg. This beauty pagent goes above and beyone the problematic construction of conventional beauty pagents. We’re talking about  inmates, people who have had their rights taken away. How can you claim consent for this? In the psychological community, prisoners are termed a protected population because of the issue of consent. The logic goes like this: how can we claim that an inmate had the power to say yes or no when saying yes has SO MANY rewards? Think about it: how can you possibly say no to the chance to get out of the cell, or even out of the prison, for even a few hours? This opens up the possibility for unethical research – you have a population who really can’t say no, which creates a system that opens itself to abuses. The same is true here. Women were selected to put themselves, their bodies, on display (partially for the entertainment of the prison staff, I’m sure). How did they have the power to say no? Would you say no to the chance to get out of the prision, to wear street clothes, if only for a short while?

Check out this video of some of the contestants. I speak only a little Spanish, so I’m not sure what they are saying most of the time, but it seems that the camera mostly focuses on the women’s bodies.

My opinion might have been different had the other 600 inmates had the choice to participate. My opinion would have been different had the women been in charge of the pagent, not the prison officials. It might have been different had there not been an extremely high monetary award that further removes their ability to say no to the event. My opinion might have even been didferent had this not taken place in Juarez, Mexico, a city where HUNDREDS of women have gone missing , and the government could give a shit. So no, I don’t think this beauty pagent "raised the self-esteem" of inmates, like the prison staff claims . I think it’s more of the fucking same.