Feminine Beauty and Beastly Politics: Women as catalysts for change

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The well-known proverb ‘beauty is but skin deep’ has a rather pessimistic vision of bodily beauty. Like Buddhist philosophy also does, this aged adage teaches us the impermanence and the fragile nature of the human body, weather male or female versions of it. However, this time-honoured adage has gained a new interpretation in our current political culture. Today, it seems that beauty is drawn to the arena where political power reigns. And the seductive power of feminine beauty or the mystified female body makes a site for huge political investments. Of course, electoral politics has always been a lucrative business in the first place. In this context, the union of the beauties with the game of power politics only could add up as a pretext to cover up the beastly nature of a decadent political culture.

"Our prejudice toward beauty then decides our political choice -- our political future. Knowing that politics today is an ugly game of power and wealth, are we then to vote for the beauties?"

The competition among the major political parties, the UNP and the UPFA, to win over popular beauty queens and actresses to their sides to contest provincial elections initially takes me to two assumptions. First, the current political culture looks ugly, and only the entry of beauty queens into politics can redecorate it; because, beauty queens can never be corrupt because they are highly sensitive and shy to abuse power. Second, the public are fed up with ugly looking politicians or their ugly politics and they demand their representatives to be extraordinarily good looking or good in nature. Here the idea of fair skin has replaced the idea of fair politics, but, paradoxically and unconsciously, it also resurfaces the necessity of politics to become beautiful and good in nature as well.

Nevertheless, the idea of beauty is always in discourse and contested. Every era has its own interpretation of beauty. The hegemonic concept of beauty today is a market ideology, ideas of beauty promoted by market capitalism through advertising. Today, we live in an era of extreme consumerism. Not only the goods we also consume ideas. Beauty is an idea we highly consume today. Most of us spend much time on beautifying our bodies and spend much of the budgets on cosmetics. In the recent past, beauty parlours have mushroomed in all parts of the country. Hunger is something, but people are made to think they need to be beautiful for others to look at them. For power politics such public imaginations of concepts like beauty then becomes a sensational attraction as it can easily capitalize on them. The decision to field beauty queens in elections is in a way to cater to the popular demand for beauty in the market. Marketing elections require beauties and the political parties have captured the existing public imagination to their advantage.

Mostly, our melodrama or teledrama culture contributes to creating a popular notion of feminine and masculine beauty today. Most of the beauty queens contesting elections from major parties are from the melodrama industry. Therefore, a fair idea of today’s concept of feminine beauty may be derived through an analysis of the physics of the popular female figures entering into politics. And this could be altogether a subjective activity since the idea of beauty is different from person to person.

However, in general, we love ‘beauty’ and not ‘ugly’. Our prejudice toward beauty then decides our political choice -- our political future. Knowing that politics today is an ugly game of power and wealth, are we then to vote for the beauties? Yes, of course, beauty queens have become our last hope for rescuing national political culture dirtied by drug dealers, assassins, rapists and mostly such criminal politicians. It is then good to have more good looking women in the councils than criminal politicians getting into them.

Can we think, therefore, that the political beast could be tamed by the arrival of beauty into politics? Or else is the beauty not just a victim of the political beast itself? We know that women are highly less represented in our legislature and other local and provincial governments. In a way there is the need before us to get as many women to contest elections and become our representatives. Women are more than the majority of this country. As mothers they are the unpaid housemaids. Women earn us foreign exchange by labouring in the Middle-East as domestic workers. They are the cheapest source of labour in the plantation and traditional agricultural sectors and the free trade zones. Women are in the military, education, financial and several other sectors. Our country’s gender gap is much less in many spheres except in the political arena.

Politics remains mostly a patriarchal domain of the state and therefore women have a huge struggle to fight for their political power. The political consciousness of women brought to politics by major parties makes us doubt their understanding of the dire struggle the women have to fight for their political emancipation in this context. Most of the actresses or beauty queens turned politicians have already shown that without a proper script they are unable to get words into their mouth, because politics and political issues are not something they are trained in to articulate properly. Therefore, we need to educate more and more women in politics, not that we should oppose their entry into politics. Not only the women who have already got famous through the media, but women who really struggle against the systemic injustices they face in our traditionally prejudiced political and social spheres must be encouraged to take to politics. More women in politics may be good, because they have been taught the importance of peace and non-conflict through their upbringing, whereas male creatures are socialized into violent behaviour.

We had women who made this country proud in the national and international arena. Sri Lanka produced the world’s first woman Prime Minister and she was a widow. Sri Lanka had the first woman Executive President, but she was also a widow. And all these prominent political women hailed from the background of aristocrat families inherited their men’s legacies in politics. We also need to admit that such women could not fight the systemic injustices of the political culture that mostly victimize women. Nevertheless some women who had a leftist upbringing in their families also shone in national politics. Today, the evolving scenario is that politicians with power, handpick some women just to attract voters into their parties. The fast decaying electoral political culture has symptomatically pointed to its collapse today with the biased nature of choosing political representatives by political parties.

"Mostly, our melodrama or teledrama culture contributes to creating a popular notion of feminine and masculine beauty today"

Not only good looking women but also good looking men entered politics using their looks for attraction. The best example is Vijaya Kumaranatunge. He was not just a popular artist, but an activist who challenged the then UNP regime and its injustices with a broader political vision and mission. Men or women, good looking or not, need a vision and mission in their politics. If the mission of the beauty queens entering into politics, today, is to further strengthen the decadent political culture by aligning with some corrupt politicians for the comforts they provide for them, they cannot catalyze social change. Women who are trapped in men’s imaginations can never save themselves or others; first, they must seek their own liberation. Democracy will flourish only when women start to fight for them and their social and political rights.