Extreme Beauty Queens

Extreme Beauty Queens is the last TV show I decided to watch for research for my FMP. I found this one the most disturbing and slightly upsetting out of them all. 

The documentary is about a beauty contest in Venezuela in South America. A country that is obsessed with beauty and has held this contest for over 60 years.

50 million people tune in to watch live across Latin America contestants battle for the Miss Venezuela crown. 

Beauty seems to be a big part of the countries identity and heritage and has been for as long as anyone can remember. 

In the show it shows to succeed girls have to undergo transformations designed by the 'King of Beauty' Osmel Sousa. 

In this documentary Osmel for the first time ever opens his doors for the public to see of his 'Beauty Factory'. This is where some girls attempt to go from slum to celebrity. Hundreds of girls are already competing in stages six months before the final. 

Osmel is the president of Miss Venezuela and his factory as he calls it is where ordinary girls are transformed. 

You can see girls lined up waiting to be judged by him with post op bandages still on them from nose jobs etc. that they have had done for the contest because he has said it will make them more 'beautiful'. Even though the girls are beautiful to begin with he will always find some flaw in them and they will go and fix that usually the only fix will be through surgery.

The woman who was presenting the show named Billy got herself weighed and measured as she entered the 'Beauty Factory' and got told that she was fat. Looking at Billy she isn't anywhere near over weight! Girls were fainting in the stages of the show because of the diets they had gone on to make themselves thinner. 

As you can see Billy is no where near fat!! 

Osmel will decide if you can be a candidate and if your nose, body speech etc needs changing and girls are willing to do these things.

The girls say he takes a beautiful woman and makes her perfect. Osmel says he is a 67 year old perfectionist and no flaw escapes him. 

While watching part of the process he told one girl that her teeth needed filling down even more even though she had just had them done the day before. I can't help but feel like pointing out a girls flaws everyday will make them more and more insecure. 

Producers say that this pageant isn't based on natural beauty its all about the potential the girls might have, the surgery has never been hidden. Even some of the judges sit with bandages all over them. While they are judging other people's body there also constantly changing there own and this all seems normal to these people, like a nose job is like going to the shop for some milk. 

As the show went on Billy admitted that she even started to begin to feel self conscious around the environment they were in especially around Osmel.

If you haven't got the money its hard to get the surgery needed to even be considered. One family from the slums saved for months so that their daughter could get a nose and boob job. They say the operations and dresses cost a lot, they paid approximately £7,000. They work all hours every day, every week to try and afford the stuff they needed to do and get for their daughter for the pageant.

Watching the documentary its obvious they are being how other people want them to look and how they think beauty looks like. It isn't for themselves. The girls all said they feel a lot of pressure. The girl who's family was from the slums ran out of money before she could get her teeth fixed to Osmel's standards as he had told her the year before that she needed them doing, so the community held a raffle to raise money for the surgery she needed. One girl even had a plastic patch sewn onto her tongue to make it too painful for her to eat solids so that she loses weight. 

The whole situation of this beauty pageant seems very violent to me and wrong. The girls don't necessary want to do this but are brought up thinking this is what they should be like. They even have beauty schools where young girls learn how to walk and do makeup with girls as young as four there. The aim being to make them grow up wanting to try and become Miss Venezuela. They also learn dance, posing for photos and catwalks. 

The young girls even said to be beautiful you have to wear makeup, this is the kind of thing they are being taught on a daily basis. I think its very wrong that this kind of attitude is being forced upon them. 

On the show people walk around with bandages all over them thinking that its normal. Billy over the time of the show without knowing it seems to start to seek Osmel's approval and starts wearing more makeup and dressing up more. This just shows the affect he has on people, even Osmel himself has had many surgeries and see's nothing wrong with it. It seems this countries obsessed with beauty and will do anything to look perfect in the eyes of others. 

Some of the contestants have even given up there one chance at university to have a chance to get through to the final one girl said "there's a lot of pressure you have to be beautiful". I just feel like its so wrong that they are made to feel like this, when none of them even need any of the surgery they have been told to have.

The show itself shows the pageant as a very glamourised situation showing how to make people perfect. It doesn't show what happens behind closed doors when they are recovering from this surgery and if any of it ever goes wrong..

It's full of people acting and trying to be perfect. The girls all have the same figures and look like cloned barbie's it's Osmel's own idea of perfection. Not there own or anybody else's!

The girls say Osmel only likes women with makeup on, he says he's always finding flaws in people and telling them what they are and how they should fix it. He says at a young age "i drew beautiful women to escape ugliness." and "i love seeing positive transformations." also that nature hasn't been kind to some women and "in the beauty industry we strive for perfection, we won't settle for mediocrity." Billy said she felt like women felt like they needed to be beautiful to be respected and he agreed. 

The whole show and pageant is a very glamourised side of surgery and beauty and very different to the reality of how it actually is. They feel like they have to fix everything and be perfect to be beautiful. Which is how they have been brought up in there country. I feel like we are starting to become more and more like this as a country not as extreme but even on TV we have advertisements promoting cosmetic surgery and people are going to see this and take notice and start wondering what they can change on themselves, striving to be as perfect and beautiful as they can.