Saleh Al-Turaiqi Okaz newspaper The annual Miss Moral Beauty pageant event held in the Eastern Province was initiated as a response to the celebrated beauty pageants Miss World and Miss Universe, which many believe objectify and commodify women. Many women also believe such shows are an attempt to revive the erstwhile slave market where women were stripped and paraded in public to tempt prospective customers into buying them at high prices. The Miss World pageant is slightly different from the slave trade of the past as this “modern slave trade” is not as unjust to the woman who exposes her body and she is paid a portion of her price. Likewise, nobody can own her though anyone with a lot of wealth will have a chance to “lease” her. Yet, the Miss Moral Beauty pageant which may have been created as a critical response to traditional beauty pageants, is in my opinion, just as morally unsound. I do not understand how one can assess and evaluate the morality of the participants in order to award them the crown. The conditions of the Miss Moral Beauty pageant further reflect something as morally ambiguous as the commodification of women in traditional beauty pageants. The very first condition of the Miss Moral Beauty pageant is that the participant should be a Saudi national. Why is this distinction made? Why is the pageant not open to every person living in the Eastern Province irrespective of their nationality? As long as we are considering values and morals — which do not change with change of place and nationality — the contest should not discriminate between people on the basis of their nationality. The sixth condition also raises some questions. It says, “Children of the organization's board members and members of the jury are not eligible to participate in the competition.” I think such a clause is unfair. The pageant's judges should judge without bias irrespective of whether the participants are their relatives or not because, as the competent authority on morality, they will always be fair and fulfill their responsibility.
