THE SOCIAL MEDIA AND BEAUTY PAGEANTS

By Alejandro Bustillos

In the past two national Philippine pageants, the role of social media was asked of certain candidates and surprisingly, one candidate clammed up and the other one cannot seem to explain her thoughts that she keeps on repeating the thesis of her answer. Although the second candidate would have done better if she was emphatic with her answer and that she did not beat around the bush. If we come to think about it, for sure these two candidates were using social media networks to reach out to their “own” virtual communities. Although they are part of the new system of things, they seem not to know their role in the continuum of the system. It has been echoed in other national pageants like in Nepal, Lebanon, Australia and Canada. The relevance of this topic can never be overemphasized then.

April Love Jordan and Analie Forbes, two beautiful faces that graced Philippine pageants whose placements were marred by their answers concerning social media

What is social media? As one website defines it, social media is a countless array of internet based tools and platforms that increase and enhance the sharing of information. This new form of media makes the transfer of text, photos, audio, video and information in general increasingly fluid among internet users. It has attained great relevance not only for regular internet users but business as well. Different platforms like Facebook, Google+ and Myspace have created online communities where people can share as much or as little personal information as they desire with other members. The result is an enormous amount of information that can be easily shared, searched, promoted, disputed and created. 

Picture Credit: Fred Cavazza

With so much information, things can go skewed and people who have such information can use them to benefit them. One good example is that people who held such information can profile people and start targeting them using advertisement for products that would particularly be suited to them. You would wonder why you are receiving advertisements coming from certain companies which you have never subscribed to. This is because, these firms advertise to your internet platform and your internet platform allows such product propaganda to reach you through your emails or accounts.

It is no wonder then that questions about social media are asked of candidates. In our digital age, news about something comes even earlier than what would be seen in televisions. The pageants are watched all over the world through live streaming while those that do not have fast internet connections can read the live blogs of writers and this would make you as someone that seems to be in the pageant hall like any other fans are. With the advent of the digital age, we reached out to other people all around the globe and asked them their choices of who they think will win in the pageants. We tried that here in Queentessence and we got a 100% prediction rate of who are the people who will enter the Top 15 of the Binibining Pilipinas Beauty Pageant. You can also feel on what pageants are being followed by fans. They register the most visits to the sites during their particular season. You can also feel when they are most emphatic of their choices as these reflect in their posts in beauty pageant forums.

Photo Credit: Op111 Productions

The social media is also like a pulse meter. It had been used to determine the popularity of the pageant as well as the popularity of the candidates. Many pageant fans say that the Miss Photogenic title should not be bestowed to the candidate with the most votes in the internet. It should be renamed Miss Internet Popularity and the Miss Photogenic title should be given back to the photographers as they have all the right to choose the candidate that comes out best in pictures. It has also been used to choose the candidate that will join the choices of the judges and/or the organizers in the semifinalist selection, i.e. if the candidate is not within the choices of the panel of selectors. They say that social media had greatly democratized the selection of the semifinalists by letting the pageant followers to inject their choices to the highly elitist preferences of the judges. Why do we say the choices are highly elitist? It is so because the judges’ are looking for the organization’s role model for everything. They are looking for a role model to pursue their humanitarian endeavors and even role model for certain products that sponsor their affairs and so and so forth.

Photo Credit: http://larrison.blogspot.com/2011/05/tips-for-nurturing-brand-community.html

Social media has created communities of people in the cyberspace or in virtual world. It has practically united people of different persuasions and culture. It has given people a venue to interact and communicate to one another. It has given people the chance to study and learn from one another. It has given the opportunity to unify in an undertaking. Take an example, the recent production number of the Miss World Philippines 2012. It was done in Ati-Atihan fashion. And just after watching it on television, someone uploaded it to the internet and people around the world have already watched the number. And what is Ati-Atihan to other nationalities? They may not know but would give them the idea that it is a fiesta celebration in honor of the Child Jesus. In an instant, all of these are grasped in the social media. And people around the world that have watched it would learn about our culture and people with the same or similar culture hold on to it. It becomes a venue for people to look back and reminisce what is in her culture and thus appreciate their identity further. 

Our local pageants are basically a microcosm of Philippine culture but it is noteworthy that pageant nowadays, present the highly technological world changes and those new values in morality, gender and place are changing and these are what the outside world sees. There are times pageants are criticized to be so outdated and there are times that it is so futuristic but conceptually, they should be representatives of the local culture. Such approaches to presentation are caught in social media and we see a cacophony of ideas of how culture should be presented in beauty pageants or if we look at the other way round, how beauty pageants have become part of our culture.

Photocredit : socialmediamarketingmadeeasy.co.nz

Social media as seen among beauty pageant candidates is as confusing as ever because they most of them think that it is apart from what they are doing in their lives. They do not realize that they have become parts of the social media and that by being part of it, it has become part of their way of living and thus become part of their culture. And this is the point, since it has become part of our culture, it is difficult to express in the way others would want us to explain or theorize with. Social media has become a barometer for greater societal changes. In this day and time, social media have made the world accessible with just the flick of the finger. In the future, it will probably make life communicate with other life forms in this vast expanse of the universe.