Icod of the Wines has announced that the municipality will stop holding beauty contests at its parties. Thus, the municipality joins the trend of many towns in Spain, such as candlemas (Tenerife), Santa Cruz de La Palma, Betanzos (La Coruña) and Quesada (Jaén).
The election of the queen of the September Festivities in honor of the Christ of Calvary will be replaced by other celebrations that highlight the local talentthe diffusion of inclusive and non-sexist valuesand bet on him heritage and the culture.
“In these contests, the female appearance is judged and valued by virtue of specific models, which discriminate against all those women who do not share them, and of course segregate for reasons of sex,” said the mayor, Javier Sierra. Likewise, he assured that this type of festivals induce to value only the physical without paying attention to other cultural virtues.
In the case of the election to child queen “other factors are added, such as the exhibition before the public of the girls, there is no opportunity or any quality other than aesthetics is promoted, and thus the belief is perpetuated that by being prettier you must be more successful, which promotes inequality based on vain criteria from childhood”.
“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 we believe it is a good time to leave this type of festival behind and move towards a more equitable and respectful society with differences”, pointed out the mayor.
However, Javier Sierra pointed out that this does not mean that other types of contests such as the pilgrimage elections for the San Marcos festivities are no longer held, because they attend to ethnographic and heritage values related to traditional clothing. We want the male presence to be included in these elections”, he said.
