With the continuous growth of social media and the beauty industry, people are being led to believe that the "ideal" physique is the one that appears in magazines or advertisements. Often, these mediums expose photoshopped images of models, celebrities or those who represent what is "perfect" (according to society). Of course, a place where we regularly visualize this is in beauty contests, and whether we sit down to watch them or even enjoy them at all; they seem to be present almost everywhere and in any part of the world. Unfortunately, most of the time, these competitions tend to value women only for their appearance and not for their intellectuality. That is why such events have caused controversy and we can get an idea of this criticism coming from TV host, John Oliver. …show more content…
It is easy to see this because at the beginning of the video we are presented with an absurd scoring system for the composition of women’s bodies. As if this wasn’t ridiculous enough, we also see the contestants using things like “buttock“ adhesive to make their bikini stay in place. With this, Oliver does not only try to emphasize that these competitions “objectify” women but also, that they try to impose a defined physical appearance. The reading for the first module point to similar criticisms stating that beauty contests often "promote the illusion that there is, in fact, a standard of beauty, that beauty can be measured objectively, and that beauty can concretize the existence apart from the individual” (Ballerino-Cohen