SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Aug. 28 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The mayor of Icod de los Vinos, Javier Sierra, has announced this Monday that beauty contests will not be held in the municipality in such a way that there will be no election of the queen of the September festivities in honor of the Christ of Calvary in its adult modality and children’s, and will be replaced by other inclusive celebrations that highlight local talent, the dissemination of inclusive and non-sexist values and a commitment to heritage and culture.
“Santa Cruz de La Palma, in 2019, decided to eliminate women’s beauty pageants from its 2020 Bajada de la Virgen de las Nieves program, and the Candelaria City Council did the same in 2022, putting as the main argument that These contests perpetuate the hypersexualization, objectification and patriarchal stereotypes of society”, he indicated in a note.
In her opinion, “in these contests the female appearance is judged and valued by virtue of specific models, which we consider not in keeping with the times and which discriminate against all those women who do not share them, and of course they segregate for reasons of sex”.
Thus, it indicates that these types of festivals “induce to value only aspects related to their physique without paying attention to other cultural virtues.”
In the case of the election to queen for children, she points out, “other factors come together, such as the display of girls to the public, there is no opportunity or any quality other than aesthetics is promoted, and thus the belief is perpetuated that by to be prettier you must be more successful, which promotes inequality based on banal criteria from childhood”.
Sierra maintains that “this measure already overcomes an issue anchored in the past, which does not contribute to the social development of the community, but instead points out and accentuates the differences between people based on their physical or aesthetic appearance, for which reason It’s a good time to leave these types of festivals behind and move towards a more equitable society that is respectful of differences”.
However, Javier Sierra pointed out that this does not mean that other types of contests such as the elections of “romera or magician of the San Marcos festivities” are no longer held, because they do attend to ethnographic and heritage values related to clothing traditional”, while pointing out that they want “the masculine presence to be included in these elections”.
The laws themselves, both regional and state, indicate that there should be no separation for reasons of sex, which is one more argument to justify overcoming the celebration of this type of act.
Instead, the City Council will promote “other types of cultural events that complement the patron saint festivals in which integration, culture, heritage and equality are manifest.”
