Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - Beauty may well be in the eye of the beholder but in a country where a woman’s eyes are the only feature on public display, judging a beauty pageant could prove awkward.
For that reason the future Miss Saudi Arabia will not win on the merits of her figure in a bikini or her perfect skin, but will instead secure the coveted crown by dint of her devotion to her parents and Islamic values.
As of tomorrow 200 veiled hopefuls will start a ten-week process to find the winner of “Miss Beautiful Morals”, including a workshop entitled “Mum, paradise is at your feet”, a reference to the Prophet Muhammad’s dictum that respect for one’s parents is a foundation of the faith. “The idea of the pageant is to measure the contestants’ commitment to Islamic morals . . . It’s an alternative to the calls for decadence in the other beauty contests that only take into account a woman’s body and looks,” Khadra al-Mubarak, the event’s founder, said.
Unlike other competitions abroad, there will be no men involved at any stage in Saudi Arabia’s only contest for young women and it will not be televised, allowing the competitors to take off the veils and black abayas that cover Saudi women from head to toe. “The winner won’t necessarily be pretty,” Ms al-Mubarak said. “We care about the beauty of the soul and the morals.”
Saudi women are required by law to cover themselves up in public, not to drive or go about in public places unaccompanied by a male relative. Any woman disobeying the strict rules risks the often violent wrath of the mutaween, the morality police who in 2002 prevented firemen from entering a burning girls’ school in Mecca because the girls were not wearing veils, resulting in the deaths of 14 students. The vigilantes, officially known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, have also in the past cracked down on florists selling red roses on Valentine’s Day and forbidden the walking of pets in public, fearful that young men might be using cute dogs to engage women in conversation.
The competition is now in its second year, with the number of women aged 15 to 25 hoping to bag the $2,600 (£1,720) prize almost tripling from last year.
While hardly racy stuff, the girls’ contest is a marked improvement on the only other previous pageants allowed in the kingdom, which were for goats, sheep and camels, and aimed at encouraging livestock breeding.
Ugly scenes
• In 2002 the Miss World pageant sparked riots in Nigeria that left more than 100 people dead after a Lagos newspaper suggested that the Prophet Muhammad would have enjoyed the pageant and would have probably married one of the contestants
• Last year the Maoist Government of Nepal banned the Miss Nepal contest, claiming that it discriminated against women. The finals of “Beauty and Brains”, Nepal’s only transgender beauty contest, were allowed to go ahead as scheduled
• A Puerto Rican beauty contestant went on to win her national competition after her dress and make-up were covered in pepper spray, causing her to break out in hives. The final day of the contest was also postponed after a bomb threat
• The 2008 Mr Gay Europe pageant in Budapest was disrupted by violence and 400 police were drafted in to protect the contestants in the final