The greatest thread in all the history of the forum,but you spoiled it man,(NSFW) (55 Viewers)
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Once upon a time, there lived in a faraway land a group of businessmen and women who grew rich by staging beauty contests and persuading young women from many countries to try and prove that each of them was not only beautiful, but that she was in fact the most beautiful woman in the whole world.
The contestants did this not, as happened in the old fable, by standing in front of a magic mirror and saying: “Mirror on the wall, which woman is the fairest of them all?” What they did was to entrust the decision to a panel of judges. These judges did not have to be beautiful themselves, but they had to be experts at using a tape measure and a bathroom scale to select the world’s most beautiful woman. Anyone had a chance of winning provided that her measurements (“statistics” as those who speak the language would put it) are not much more or much less than 36 inches for the bust, 24 inches for the waist, and 36 inches for the hips, giving her what is called an hourglass figure. She also had to have long legs with nicely rounded calves
That stipulation of hourglass figures effectively ruled out the possibility of any African woman winning the contest, since African women tried to look quite substantial in size, if only to debunk all those stories about famine in Africa. Winning beauty contests was not easy, as contestants were required to be scantily attired and able to wear shoes with very high heels while wiggling and swinging their hips in a room full of men. The trick was to avoid stumbling while doing this. As a rule only one contestant is selected from any one country, following which she is expected to stop bearing her own name and start answering to the name of her country, as in “Miss Thailand” or “Miss Norway.”
Why do so many girls from so many countries take part in these contests when the winner, on being crowned, rules over no kingdom (queendom?), and her reign lasts for only one year? It probably is because, during the year of her reign she is given the opportunity of presenting prizes at baby shows, and of being the special guest of honour at the relaunch of a consumer product that no longer has a market. At the end of her glorious reign she is given the privilege of “crowning” her chosen successor, and of being allowed to bear the title of “ex-beauty queen” for the rest of her natural life, sometimes even after that.
The chairperson of the group of businessmen and women who owned the Miss World pageant once summoned a meeting of stakeholders, at which she said: “This year, we will try something new, by moving our beauty pageant to the Dark Continent, to a country where the climate is sultry and the oil money is plentiful.” She mentioned the name of a populous black African country.
One of the stakeholders immediately objected, saying: “The information I have is that, in spite of all its oil wealth, the country you have just named is too poor and too corrupt to support our kind of pageant.”
The chairperson gave him a superior smile and said: “You don’t mention poverty when you are talking about a country where as many as two per cent of the population is not poor. The information I have is that only 98 per cent of the people are poor, while two per cent are wallowing in affluence — what some like to refer to as wealth derived from sources known and unknown. That two per cent is our target audience.”
“How will the remaining 98 per cent react to our holding an irrelevant pageant in their midst?”
“They won’t even know that such a thing is happening,” the chairperson said. (She was wrong. When they tried to hold the pageant in the African country it caused a riot in which over two hundred people were killed.).
“Will there be any gains accruing to the host country from this pageant?” someone else asked.
“I am glad you asked that question,” the chairperson beamed. “It is estimated that 5,000 reporters, 1,000 photographers and 500 television cameramen will be accredited to cover the pageant. As a direct result of the ensuing publicity, an estimated two million tourists will flock to the country’s hotels and beaches in one year alone. These are tourists who, until this moment, have no knowledge of the existence of the country. And if tourists come, can investors be far behind?”
“But,” the man who had first raised the objection insisted, “what about those very things that the country may not want photographed — the bad roads, the refuse heaps, the traffic jams, the cows that roam free on runways, and the armed robbers?”
“There must be one or two spots in the entire country where the potholes are not very deep or the refuse heaps very high. We will seek them out and have the contestants photographed there. I am sure the host government will not object.” She paused, looked round the room, and asked: “Is there any other point anyone wishes to make, before I adjourn the meeting?”
No one in that room had any other point to make, but in an African village halfway across the world other men had plenty to say. A man sitting with his friends in the shade of a mango tree critically studied a group photograph of some European beauty queens published on the front page of the local newspaper he was reading and said: “I didn’t know that famine and malnutrition have extended to Europe. See how underfed the girls in this picture look.”
The man who was sitting next to him, and who knew a thing or two about life outside the village, glanced at the picture and laughed. “What you are looking at,” he said, “has nothing to do with famine or starvation. Those are the most beautiful girls in their countries, and they have assembled to vie for the privilege of one of them being declared the most beautiful woman in the world.”
The first man’s mouth fell open. “These?” he gasped.
In a country where a woman’s beauty is judged by her generous proportions, and where a slim woman is sneeringly referred to as a “stegomyia mosquito”, the idea of regarding as beautiful a woman who could barely fill a man’s arms seemed ridiculous.
“None of them has any scarification on her face or body,” the man who had been critical said. “Their lips are not pierced and adorned with lip rings; their necks are not elongated and ringed with ivory bangles, their heads are not clean shaven, their teeth are not filed, and they are altogether too thin. If my wife looked like that, people would say that I have not been giving her chop money. You mark my words, if these pictures should fall into the hands of our women, slimness will become the fashion. Our wives will give up eating starch, and go on a diet of the raw leaves they call salad. Then there won’t be leaves left for our goats to eat.”
And that, if you believe me, is why the organizers of the Miss World pageant have been shying away from holding another contest in Black Africa since that disastrous attempt in Kano a couple of years ago. They must feel that their show cannot be guaranteed an appreciative audience.
The contestants did this not, as happened in the old fable, by standing in front of a magic mirror and saying: “Mirror on the wall, which woman is the fairest of them all?” What they did was to entrust the decision to a panel of judges. These judges did not have to be beautiful themselves, but they had to be experts at using a tape measure and a bathroom scale to select the world’s most beautiful woman. Anyone had a chance of winning provided that her measurements (“statistics” as those who speak the language would put it) are not much more or much less than 36 inches for the bust, 24 inches for the waist, and 36 inches for the hips, giving her what is called an hourglass figure. She also had to have long legs with nicely rounded calves
That stipulation of hourglass figures effectively ruled out the possibility of any African woman winning the contest, since African women tried to look quite substantial in size, if only to debunk all those stories about famine in Africa. Winning beauty contests was not easy, as contestants were required to be scantily attired and able to wear shoes with very high heels while wiggling and swinging their hips in a room full of men. The trick was to avoid stumbling while doing this. As a rule only one contestant is selected from any one country, following which she is expected to stop bearing her own name and start answering to the name of her country, as in “Miss Thailand” or “Miss Norway.”
Why do so many girls from so many countries take part in these contests when the winner, on being crowned, rules over no kingdom (queendom?), and her reign lasts for only one year? It probably is because, during the year of her reign she is given the opportunity of presenting prizes at baby shows, and of being the special guest of honour at the relaunch of a consumer product that no longer has a market. At the end of her glorious reign she is given the privilege of “crowning” her chosen successor, and of being allowed to bear the title of “ex-beauty queen” for the rest of her natural life, sometimes even after that.
The chairperson of the group of businessmen and women who owned the Miss World pageant once summoned a meeting of stakeholders, at which she said: “This year, we will try something new, by moving our beauty pageant to the Dark Continent, to a country where the climate is sultry and the oil money is plentiful.” She mentioned the name of a populous black African country.
One of the stakeholders immediately objected, saying: “The information I have is that, in spite of all its oil wealth, the country you have just named is too poor and too corrupt to support our kind of pageant.”
The chairperson gave him a superior smile and said: “You don’t mention poverty when you are talking about a country where as many as two per cent of the population is not poor. The information I have is that only 98 per cent of the people are poor, while two per cent are wallowing in affluence — what some like to refer to as wealth derived from sources known and unknown. That two per cent is our target audience.”
“How will the remaining 98 per cent react to our holding an irrelevant pageant in their midst?”
“They won’t even know that such a thing is happening,” the chairperson said. (She was wrong. When they tried to hold the pageant in the African country it caused a riot in which over two hundred people were killed.).
“Will there be any gains accruing to the host country from this pageant?” someone else asked.
“I am glad you asked that question,” the chairperson beamed. “It is estimated that 5,000 reporters, 1,000 photographers and 500 television cameramen will be accredited to cover the pageant. As a direct result of the ensuing publicity, an estimated two million tourists will flock to the country’s hotels and beaches in one year alone. These are tourists who, until this moment, have no knowledge of the existence of the country. And if tourists come, can investors be far behind?”
“But,” the man who had first raised the objection insisted, “what about those very things that the country may not want photographed — the bad roads, the refuse heaps, the traffic jams, the cows that roam free on runways, and the armed robbers?”
“There must be one or two spots in the entire country where the potholes are not very deep or the refuse heaps very high. We will seek them out and have the contestants photographed there. I am sure the host government will not object.” She paused, looked round the room, and asked: “Is there any other point anyone wishes to make, before I adjourn the meeting?”
No one in that room had any other point to make, but in an African village halfway across the world other men had plenty to say. A man sitting with his friends in the shade of a mango tree critically studied a group photograph of some European beauty queens published on the front page of the local newspaper he was reading and said: “I didn’t know that famine and malnutrition have extended to Europe. See how underfed the girls in this picture look.”
The man who was sitting next to him, and who knew a thing or two about life outside the village, glanced at the picture and laughed. “What you are looking at,” he said, “has nothing to do with famine or starvation. Those are the most beautiful girls in their countries, and they have assembled to vie for the privilege of one of them being declared the most beautiful woman in the world.”
The first man’s mouth fell open. “These?” he gasped.
In a country where a woman’s beauty is judged by her generous proportions, and where a slim woman is sneeringly referred to as a “stegomyia mosquito”, the idea of regarding as beautiful a woman who could barely fill a man’s arms seemed ridiculous.
“None of them has any scarification on her face or body,” the man who had been critical said. “Their lips are not pierced and adorned with lip rings; their necks are not elongated and ringed with ivory bangles, their heads are not clean shaven, their teeth are not filed, and they are altogether too thin. If my wife looked like that, people would say that I have not been giving her chop money. You mark my words, if these pictures should fall into the hands of our women, slimness will become the fashion. Our wives will give up eating starch, and go on a diet of the raw leaves they call salad. Then there won’t be leaves left for our goats to eat.”
And that, if you believe me, is why the organizers of the Miss World pageant have been shying away from holding another contest in Black Africa since that disastrous attempt in Kano a couple of years ago. They must feel that their show cannot be guaranteed an appreciative audience.
Damn! That reminds me. I gotta find me an Etch-A-Sketch...
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