Affirm Women and STOP Commercializing Their Bodies!!!

Women’s bodily integrity is constantly undermined by processes of commercialization. In the advertising and pornographic industries, women’s bodies have been used globally as a saleable commodity. The association of aspects of women’s bodies and characteristics with the sale of goods and services has virtually become a norm in advertising. One of the ways in which this is achieved is through the organisation of beauty pageants where women are made to believe that what is really important about their being is their physical beauty.

Whereas both women and men care about their bodies and invest time, energy and money on looking and feeling fashionable and healthy, the particular emphasis placed on women about their physical beauty through the organisation of beauty pageants reinforces their subordination and oppression in society. It reinforces the notion of women’s bodies as saleable commodity. It further exacerbates the negatively, socially construed notion that women are constantly in competition with one another and that critical thinking, intellectual pursuits and participation in wider public policy issues should not be their concerns.

As a developing country, Ghana cannot afford to allow the society to degenerate to a point where young women, especially those who have managed to enter tertiary institutions to aspire to be “beauty queens”. At different levels, different companies recruit young women and get them to compete against each other in beauty pageants for advertising and other commercialization purposes. So, very early on in their careers, the interest of such young women is diverted away from serious academic and other more socially relevant responsibilities.

In the end, the public starts blaming women for wearing scanty clothes and exposing their bodies. The kinds of clothes women wear are not the issue here. Neither is it an issue of morality, since there is no established correlation between the kinds of apparel women or men cloth themselves with and the extent or nature of their morality. Rather, the main problem is the contradiction between the high moral standards placed on women and the increasing degeneration of the society in terms of how it values women and their position in society. This is a society that has decided to prioritize commercialization and profit rather than promoting human well-being, productive capacity and intellectual development. In such a situation, women always pay a big price through overt and subtle initiatives that undermine their worth and contributions.

As creative beings, women are making huge contributions to sustain the well-being of families against the background of social and economic crisis. We should therefore continue to work hard to promote women’s well-being through exposing acts which undermine their worth and deny them a chance to forge ahead to promote gender equality. We can change the situation by working together as women and men who care about this country’s future.

Do you agree or disagree with Dr. Rose Mensah-Kutin? What do you think about beauty pageants? Please share your views with ABANTU-ROWA.ORG visitors.