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Take 24 pretty but mainly poor and under-educated female amputee landmine victims from the provinces, get a bunch of foreigners to dress them up, and make them compete in a beauty pageant in which the main prize is prosthetic limbs.
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Does that sound acceptable? According to the overwhelmingly male voices backing the project, Miss Landmine Cambodia 2009 is "for their own good".
The Cambodian Mine Action Authority's chief Sam Sotha, who is also a member of the prime minister's cabinet, is so impressed he signed a letter of support for the project despite the government's September 2006 ban on beauty contests of any kind.
The competition is the brainchild of Norwegian theatre director and artist Morten Traavik, who says people who object to amputee women in bikinis and on runways are closed minded and underestimate the women involved.
Other prizes include household appliances (wonderful for the little ladies who are lucky enough to have electricity in their village) and modeling shoots which will feature in a glossy Miss Landmine Magazine - one it is doubtful many of the contestants can read or even afford.
Miss Landmine Angola 2008, held this month, was a huge hit, Mr Traavik says, and the overwhelming disgust over the project voiced by African feminists in blogs and articles was unwarranted. Mr Traavik, however, does little to reassure on his own attitudes to women.
Of feminist Sokari Ekine, who has written for on-line journals and websites in both Africa and Norway, he wrote ' Respected feminist? Give me a break. She is just a blogger, and a pretty stupid one at that'.
But do these women have a point? When Sokari Ekine's website Black Looks condemned the African pageant, there seemed to be some very valid points put on the table by other bloggers.
"These middleclass/rich Norwegian folks would be better received petitioning the western companies and governments that produce and allow the distribution of these offensive weapons," wrote Obi.
"As a trans man I am all too familiar with this kind of apparent fetishizing of difference. File this one under “Wrong. Very wrong” then spread the word," added Jay Sennet.
"This is really disgusting. Particularly sinister is the white people primping the women … Provocative for the sake of it rather than serving any useful or empowering purpose," wrote Heidi of pictures on the Miss Landmine website showing contestants being prepared.
And Hippo asked whether spending the $US80,000 it cost to put on the pageant might not have been better spent giving them an education or teaching them a skill.
"(Then) they could escape the discrimination they have to live with by demonstrating the useful contribution to society that they could make. Seeing them as productive citizens would do more to highlight the inhuman horror of landmines."
Cambodian contestants will face similar challenges. Will a few nights in a nice hotel they will never be able to visit again and a gift of the gowns they wear on the night (donated by a label they can never afford) help these girls back in their province?
How useful is an evening gown and a designer bikini to an amputee mother on a rice farm in Kampot?
Whether Mr Traavik likes it or not, the pageant also opens them up to the possibility of exploitation, including sexual exploitation - if beauty pageants are not exploitative enough, whether they be able bodied or not.
Bringing vulnerable girls from remote areas to the city for a one-night cattle parade before the project leaves Cambodia, possibly never to return, opens the women up to all sorts of new dangers.
The main problem Miss Landmine faces is sustainability - it just isn't sustainable, and that is why it has raised suspicions it is exploitative. How is this project different from a foreigner walking in to a girlie bar, giving a sex worker money for a one night stand and then saying he has helped her regain her self esteem?
What's next in Mr Traavik's humanitarian drive? Miss Genocide, where the winner is granted a stay of execution? Miss HIV/AIDS, where the winner receives a year's supply of anti-retrovirals? Miss Human Rights Abuses, where the winner is not beaten?
Why hasn't Mr Traavik seen fit to hold this pageant in a developed country? Why is he choosing the most vulnerable women from one of the most vulnerable social groups in some of the poorest parts of the world.
It's disappointing the Cambodian men who have approved this "freak show", as Mr Traavik himself has jokingly referred to it, have apparently not considered these issues.
Hopefully the government will uphold its ban on beauty parades and, if Mr Traavik really cares, he will put the money to good use in Cambodia anyway without having to stage his heavily sponsored and potentially lucrative show, or taking his modeling shots to fill his expensive magazine and then dumping these women right back where they started while he gets on a plane.
April 23, 2008
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Is a comment really warranted here? 80,000USD to put on a show that is CLEARLY an act of exploitation, or at the very least a mockery and simply in bad taste. Although the argument I am sure by government officials, including Sam Sotha, is that it will bring attention to the landmine issues in Cambodia, the fact remains that the money could provide for more than one leg for the winner but for many in need or continue in the process of ridding this country from these mines. Why "celebrate" their difference caused by pain and suffering, when in fact we can actually do something productive to change it and reduce further trauma? Simply bad taste!
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