20yr. old Cynthia Duque, winner of Nuestra Belleza Latina 2012, is being sabotaged throughout the social network world and being labeled as "too fat" to represent Mexico at the upcoming Miss Universe Pageant this weekend in Moscow, Russia. Miss Duque took a "selfie" that only showed her face and posted it on her Twitter account and immediately received criticisms of having a "too rounded" and "too filled-in" face, suggesting she was overweight and no longer qualified to represent Mexico.
Following the massive sharing and posting of the model's "selfie," a composite of a recent photo shoot of Miss Duque in a white bikini were also massively shared throughout social networks like Twitter and Facebook and also Latin television talk shows, providing more evidence that the present Miss Mexico is unfit to represent beauty for appearing "too fat." It was also being debated that Miss Duque had breached her "pageant" contract that stated she would make sure to keep the weight she had (or lose more) from when she won the Univison pageant of "Nuestra Belleza Latina" until the Miss Universe pageant. Several photos comparing Miss Duque from the first pageant to present time along with photos created to exaggerate her weight were spread/shared/tweeted all over the Internet.
This type of negative social sharing, in my opinion, is very damaging to a country's culture and especially to a country's youth. If Mexico is going to criticize Miss Duque for being "too fat" because her face appears "too round" and urge for her to be replaced, what is it going to make the population think? It's going to make them think that beauty is only those who are "thin" enough, who are not fat and who do not have "rounded" faces.
It is this kind of use of social media that upsets me and makes me wish that it didn't exist. Types of communication should be used to promote the acceptance of all types of beauties, not continuing the brain washing of the youth that they are not socially acceptable unless they look like Barbie or Ken.
Interesting post Yessy! The obsession of a "fit" body image also reminded me of the case in South Korea with its fast growing aesthetic surgery industry. If you ever watch Korean drama, it is not hard to noticed how much the media stresses the importance of having a beautiful appearance. Not only are the majority of the actress and actors unrealistically beautiful, they often incorporate the ideologies of "beauty" and "being skinny is good" into the story lines and dialogue. There is a pressure on both women and men in Korea to transform their physical appearance to conform to the societal ideals of beauty--up to 50% of South Korean women have undergone plastic surgeries. It makes me sad when I see female body images everywhere in the commercials where they all look tall and abnormally skinny. I wonder when and why would this “ideal” body figure of women became a society norm that girls should be skinny to be seen as attractive. I was grocery shopping the other day and took a quick glance on the magazine covers. Nine out of 10 of them were about “how to lose 30 pounds in a week.” I turned my head away with disgust. Growing up in Hong Kong, we were all taught by the society, whether from the media or from our peers, of how we should look like to be attractive: be skinny, have pretty skin, look pale, and dress in a fashionable way. I remembered being called as fat by a guy when I was only 105 lbs. I found it interesting how some people think it is appropriate to judge someone openly by their look and be rude about it. So if you don’t fit in the society norm of being attractive, you immediately become a target for criticism until you surrender and try to fit in. Is that what our society becoming right now? What should we do to break the norms when the media would not let us get away from them?
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