Photo: Lorenzo Lavirini.
This is the report from London Student newspaper regarding our on-going campaign against the sexist beauty pageants that have been doing the rounds at universities in London. Of the 200 or so attendees only 1/3rd of these were SOAS students, and 2/3rds had guest list. There were a few Donald Trump-esque men with Barbie dolls on either arm none of whom were SOAS students. During the protest we had many people attending come over to us and say they fully supported us and that they were only there to support their friends who had entered. The reportage from LS i will let you comment on but i am glad they have printed some of the ridiculous comments from Amjad Gafoor, chief protagonist-he kinda epitomises all that is to object to about with these vile competitions. During the campaign elly, the women's officer was attacked for standing in the way of a women’s charity event.
"The principle of fundraising for Breast Cancer Research as a marketing tactic is quite disgraceful in my opinion, as the commercial stereotypes that the event promotes make it psychologically harder for women to recover after losing their breasts and hair, as they are then deemed not a “real” woman. "
Well done to Elly and the team for highlighting this issue at SOAS and fighting for the right of women to come to university free from objectification.
London Student report: "The ongoing hullabaloo at SOAS surrounding 121 Entertainment’s Miss University London pageant came to a head on Tuesday the 25th of November as the SOAS Women’s Society held a ‘day of action’ protesting against the event.
Speaking before the event, Eleanor James, SOAS Women’s Officer, said: “We want to make it clear that it’s not the individuals taking part that we are directing this campaign at.
“I feel that the campaign is not really about the beauty pageant itself or the contestants, we’re not trying to ban people from going we’re not trying to ban people from taking part, it’s the system in which this pageant has been allowed to arise that we’re objecting to.
“The university voted against the pageant, and I need to reinforce that it has nothing to do with the School of Oriental and African Studies, ‘SOAS’ is a generic term which is why they can use the name ‘Miss SOAS’.”
James feels that while they oppose the Miss University London event generally, the SOAS round had special significance: “67% of male students are satisfied with their experiences at SOAS, while just 43% of women feel satisfied. This shows a clear disparity between the university experience itself, and the gender pay gap is also still very apparent.
“63% of women on leaving university would rather be a glamour model than be a doctor, so these are quite shocking facts I think, and now with the student financing problems more and more women are having to work in sex call centres and lap dancing clubs which are actually allowed to advertise at some Freshers Fairs!
“The pageant and objectification are just a symptom of wider things that are going on. One of the things that brought me to SOAS was the climate of equality, diversity and I feel that these are things that we need to protect here because I think there’s a lot of complacency in society in groups of people who don’t feel that they have been oppressed because they haven’t experienced these forms of oppression and don’t realise what it can be like.
“For instance, if they’ve never had an eating disorder or someone around them has never had an eating disorder, or if they haven’t come into contact with domestic violence. Or if they are from, as lot of people here are, liberal families where people aren’t constantly reading fashion magazines, I think because people are intelligent enough to see these things and reject them they don’t feel the need to protect the safe place we have at this university.
“The Miss SOAS pageant is an example of something I don’t like in society encroaching on the student’s space here, and I don’t want the JCR turning into a cattle market.
“I was told yesterday that before the girls go on they have their waists measured and their breasts measured, that’s something that used to happen at horse shows that I used to go to.
There is, however, a large block of support for the event, with attendance estimated to be well over 200 people.
Amjad Ghafoor, of 121 Entertainment and organiser of the Miss SOAS pageant believes the event to be a: “triumph for freedom of speech at SOAS. The student body is changing for the better, by becoming more accepting of different views. People have to realise that not everyone at SOAS is a hardcore leftist & they need to be more tolerant of people who don’t agree with them, rather than intimidating them like thugs or shouting them down!
“They are a minority with no mandate, who “claim” to speak for all the women at SOAS and it’s just annoyed a lot of them, who feel that there actions are misrepresenting them. Their behaviour has been Stalinist and amounted to that of a juvenile delinquent. Tearing down posters etc. is pure censorship. Unlike them, I and a lot of people believe that SOAS students are intelligent enough to be given the choice to decide for themselves and that can only be done if they are informed of both sides of the argument. Behaving like a nanny state just patronises the intelligence of the vast majority of students at SOAS.”
Read much more, if you need to, here..
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