Her win highlights the unique role pageants play in countries like hers, which is roiled by poverty, a devastating war on drugs and pervasive violence. And it shows that while pageants can be a positive force in some places, they still have a long way to go.
Transforming an imperialist history
A legacy of American influence, pageants are organized everywhere in the archipelago — from poor communities to upscale subdivisions, in schools, town fiestas and even overseas. In cities such as Hong Kong, where thousands of Filipinas are domestic workers, pageants are organized on their only day off on Sunday.
J. Pilapil Jacobo, an assistant professor of literature and gender studies at Ateneo de Manila University and a longtime pageant enthusiast, credits this obsession with competitive beauty to the country’s history under colonial rule — first under Spain, then under the United States.
“Imperialism [deprived] us of our own indigenous standards of loveliness, a beautiful body, good character, art and aesthetic,” she explained. “I do feel beauty pageants help us retrieve such notions.”
She added that for a country such as the Philippines, where about a fifth of the population live below the poverty line, pageants allow for “victories that cannot be claimed in the everyday, like [in the] political economy.”
“These projections of beauty, intellectual beauty, cultural awareness, speed up national pride,” she said.
The significance of LGBTQ fans
Perhaps the largest and the loudest of pageant followers are those from the LGBTQ community. Miss Philippines candidates have also established themselves as their allies in a country that lacks laws protecting gay people, typically championing causes such as HIV awareness.
Jacobo, herself a trans woman, said she grew up watching Miss Universe. “It was important for LGBTQ to see possibilities of beauty and participating with beauty on that stage,” she said. “Just think of a trans girl, anywhere in the world, not being confident about her beauty — then you are presented with these empowered women. Not every face is the same. Not every body is the same. You get to identify.”
She expressed disappointment in how some LGBTQ fans from the Philippines were quick to put down Spain’s Angela Ponce, this pageant’s first trans woman contestant.
“I don’t need to win Miss Universe,” Ponce said as she bowed out of the top 20.
“You cannot underestimate how that statement made me and many other trans people identify with [her],” said Jacobo.
Cause for congratulation
Words of congratulations have begun pouring in for Gray, including from the Malacanang presidential palace.
“Ms. Gray’s triumph sets the bar high in empowering more Filipino women to believe in themselves and to fight for their own place in the universe,” presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said in a statement.
Even a top opposition leader, Vice President Leni Robredo, joined in. “With the eyes of the world on you, you chose to highlight your work with the poor, and to send a much needed message of hope to all,” she wrote on Twitter, referencing Gray’s work with children in the slum community of Tondo in Manila.
Congratulations also came from Pia Wurtzbach, the last Miss Philippines to win the contest in 2015. In an Instagram post, she wrote that Gray was “on fire” and had made the Philippines proud.
‘We still have long strides’
With deeply rooted cultural affinity for beauty queens, criticism of the pageant format is often frowned upon. But Joms Salvador, secretary general of the grass-roots-based Gabriela Alliance of Women, hopes pageants will not set back how women are perceived.
“While we congratulate Catriona Gray and all of the Philippines ... we are also critical of the fact that it’s already 2018 ... and we still have long strides to take in terms of women’s rights,” she said. Divorce, for example, is still not legal in the Catholic-majority country, nor are same-sex unions.
Just this year, at least four Miss Earth contestants accused a Philippine organizer of sexual harassment after the pageant ended in November. Salvador noted that the structure of pageants could discourage contestants from coming forward and feed into notions that women must look a certain way.
“It’s not easy to be a beauty queen. You need to have nice makeup, a nice body,” Salvador continued. “To achieve that, it’s a whole industry of moneymaking and business. At the end of the day, someone wins ... but the biggest winner is the business interest of those forever profiteering from the beauty industry.”
But for fans like Jacobo, modern women are trying to “revise their participation” in pageants. Gray, for example, actively researched her national costume by interviewing weavers on the southern island of Mindanao.
“I’m looking at it from the perspective of human agency,” said Jacobo. “I do feel that of all our contestants, Catriona is the most intellectual — the most post-colonial.”
