This year, we will have the first Miss AI contest, in which competitors were created through artificial intelligence. They are characters that exist merely in the digital environment, with created personalities, just like the people two marketing plansbut with one big difference: were created from and to follow beauty stereotypes. Of course, they all have wonderful skin, are thin and beautiful by today’s standards.
If the fact that there are lifestyle influencers and celebrities who edit their photos to the extreme is bad enough, considering the problem of beauty standards, imagine what it’s like to have fictional characters created as if they were idealized real people , to the point where you don’t realize at first that they were created with Artificial Intelligence.
In this context, the creation of these characters represents serious obstacles to women’s mental health in three phases:
- In the creation itself, as they use pre-existing beauty stereotypes within the societies in which the creators are inserted;
- In your online presence, as your body representation spreads these stereotypes throughout the digital sphere;
- And in a third moment, these images feed the harmful comparison, destroying self-esteem and body representation, which is so encouraged by the media, were pink magazines that comment on women’s bodies not still common? known people as if their bodies were in the public domain.
However, in addition to the specific impact of this competition for women who do not exist, it is important to reflect on the Women’s Competitions Misses Where does this custom of evaluating women based on their beauty come from? I will use it as a case study to compare Miss Universe.
We’re still in the 50s, with a light touch of modernity
The Miss Universe contest has existed since 1952, a time when the housewife dedicated to her family, with a wasp waist, was the ideal of beauty. The most accurate definition would be “the hourglass housewife†. This contest is the apogee of beauty contests for adult women and, although it has already changed in some key issues, as we will see below, it continues to have as its main point, as a spectacle, the primary appreciation he laughed at feminine beauty, and only in the background at his intellect. (This is not related to the cognitive abilities of the contestants, but to the priorities of the competition). Even so, there are certain points that I will not fail to mention, to present both sides of the coin:
- Competitions are platforms that can boost career starts (see the case of our Inês Brusselmans and Priyanka Chopra);
- They help break stereotypes within the female gender, by accepting trans women (like the wonderful Portuguese Marina Machete, who really made a difference);
- They started accepting plus size women, with one competitor, Jane Dipika Garret, from Nepal;
- And in the last year, removed the maximum age level (previously contestants had to be a maximum of 28 years old).
Nevertheless, these last ones are just small changes, the lowest in the world we live in, with external beauty having an exaggeratedly high weight in the competition. Regarding the calendar of the competition tests, after the preliminary interviews, the live show. In this, the first event is a parade in a swimsuit and then another in a formal dress. In the first television phase, that’s all that counts. Only 20 pass. After more qualifiers, only the top 5 competitors will have to answer live questions about the impact they want to bring to society, in terms of gender equality, education, etc. Furthermore, in the rules of participationthe competition explains (at least, come on) that women must have a relevant social role in their lives, volunteering and fighting for social causes.
However, the contest values description also dictates that “the women who compete represent the modern, aspirational global example for the potential present in all women.†Honestly, the aspirational description of the event reminds me of the 1950s housewife magazines about the ideal woman – which is no wonder, given that it was at the same time that The contest started. These beauty standards create a gap between idealized women and those who are must aspire to be like them.
magazine cover from the 50s, taken from the website “120 Years of the Perfect Womanâ€
In my opinion, it is not a question of changing the standards of the contest, but rather it should be a matter of rethinking the relevance of the existence of beauty contests. They do not limit themselves to evaluating women’s beauty, with all the associated prejudices, but they also continue to perpetuate aesthetic competition between women. Of course, this does not invalidate the fact that there is a notion of community among the competitors, as has already been reported by those who participated, but in its origins, this event is still a beauty contest.
If, on the one hand, I am not interested in freely criticizing those who participate in these competitions, because I can understand the desire to create a platform, on the other This patriarchal custom of beauty contests for women scares me. The truth is that, around the same time, a“Mr. Universeâ€, which rewards the most physically sculpted male bodies. Now, both represent the same thing: the pinnacle of gender stereotypes. However, Miss Universe has much greater media coverage, since, as we know, the sexual objectification of women sells much more.
Taking into account the pre-existing problems of beauty contests, this new Miss AI contest brings yet another layer: an idealization of beauty so manipulated that the women presented do not even exist in real life, which is an effective dehumanization of women. This is not a mere award for creating realistic images through Artificial Intelligence. Everyone knows that, thanks to the attention given by the media and the population’s habit of being entertained by other women’s lives, constantly giving their opinion on their physical appearance, the concept of a competition for Misses sells. “And if it sells, it is made.†But at what cost? To feed more and more the machine that breaks women’s self-esteem, so that they look for the next product that promises to love their bodies more? Of course, there is no harm, on the contrary, in wanting to take care of our body, but here we are talking about another level, of having a reference to an idealization that is harmful to women’s health.
Above all, even though these women don’t exist in real life, they directly affect women and girls who do exist. If it can already be harmful to an adult woman, imagine what it can do to a teenager with complexes about her body. In this context, studies carried out by Dove brand demonstrated that 1 in 3 women feel pressured to change their appearance thanks to the images they consume online; and that 1 in 5 women up to the age of 18 would be willing to sacrifice up to 5 years of their life, if it would guarantee them their ideal of beauty.
If 20% of girls would give up to 5 years of their life to have the body they most desire, what do you think a contest of women idealized by AI, created with such detail that they look real, will help? It won’t help anything, it will only make it worse. None of the competitors are plus size. None have cellulite, stretch marks, facial asymmetry, pimples or skin texture. However, all real women naturally have all of this throughout their lives. This MIss AI contest is not a contest between different female character creations, it is a contest of different packages of beauty stereotypes.
One thing is certain: If we changed everything that bothers us about our bodies, we would find more things. This insane search for an ideal of beauty is an endless dangerous road.
âShe wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to change to truly see her.â Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth
