Been having some problems with a a news story recently. A beauty contestant, a contender for the Miss Universe title (which I had previously assumed was a body-building competition, but apparently is not) by the name of Jenna Talackova was refused entry to the competition for being trans.I don't recall having been torn by a story so much in a long time.
I'd like her to be accepted as a woman, sure, but I'm also aware that as someone born male she has a natural advantage in being broad shouldered, tall and slim hipped, a current standard of beauty that most women would struggle to attain, and which sets a false standard for women. I kind of feel in the same way we ban people born as different genders from athletic events, we should ban them from these.
I don't believe it is a fair standard of female beauty. It is the kind of thing that encourages anorexia and general low self esteem. No natal woman can match this skeletal structure. The pictures in magazines may be exactly this shape, but that's because they are photoshop-enhanced. I'm not sure it's healthy to confuse the issue this way.
This encourages the vast majority of women within the median range to believe they don't meet the standards of beauty. I'm not looking to convince anyone here I'm right, I'm asking for clarification. I don't know the solution. If you ban her, it sends the message you don't believe she is a woman. This is wrong. I don't believe she should ever have been banned.Once banned, if you reinstate her it highlights how much her body is similar to the other, natal but genetic outlier women. Perhaps then they'll pick a smaller, wider hipped winner. That could only be a good thing. But if she wins, it will get ugly. She will be used as a punching bag for every radfem transphobe in the world. It will play up to the idea that we do nothing but buy into the patriarchal view of women as objects, that we objectify ourselves in the process of becoming female.
I don't necessarily think the concept of beauty is something to be opposed, much as I'd like us to take everyone at more than face value it isn't going to happen anytime soon. I don't know enough about this particular competition to say it's better or worse than any other.
Like I say, I'm torn. I'd love this kind of validation, and envy the likes of Andrej Pejic modelling fashion. But there has to be something wrong with a world where our standard of female beauty is such that it can only be attained by a tiny minority of biologically freakish women and those of us born with male bodies.
What's the answer? I don't know. I'm not saying she should be barred, or that everyone should. All I'm saying, I guess, is that it is not as cut-and-dried an issue as our narrow self-interest would have us reflexively believe.
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