In a bold act of female solidarity, Miss Peru contestants shocked their pageantry audience on Sunday by sharing a set of statistics completely different to what was expected. #MisMedidasSon (My measurements are) revealed a very different, and unexpected kind of ‘sizing up’ from the women, who instead of revealing their bust, waist and hip measurements, instead, shared shocking facts about how their country measures up in terms of violence against women.
If raising these facts in such a public forum wasn’t bold enough, raising them in a setting designed primarily for judgement of females based primarily on physical attributes, was genius and a huge win for females everywhere.
Let’s take a look at just a few of the outrageous facts that were brought, literally, into the spotlight:
“more than 25% of girls and teenagers are abused in their schools”
“2 femicides and 156 attempted femicides so far this year”
“2,202 cases of femicide reported in the last nine years”
Not long after the #metoo campaign sparked women across the globe to draw attention to the enormous scale of sexual assault happening day to day, it seems that women around the world are becoming increasingly confident in standing up against inequality, abuse and discrimination.
Personally, I’m cheering all the way from the UK for those brave Peruvian ladies, who took advantage of their public status, and did with it, the absolute best thing they could for the female population of Peru. The more we continue on this trajectory of openness and empowerment, the harder the issue will be to ignore.
The women continued the theme of the contest by discussing their suggestions as to how violence against females in Peru could be combatted. They then walked the bathing suit round with a backdrop of news stories related to the same theme. This was another thumbs-up for feminism as the girls defied the need to hide their bodies, making it clear that violence against women is never appropriate, regardless of how they’re dressed.
I must admit, there was a part of me that questioned whether a beauty pageant could be combined with any kind of feminist motion, but these women did it beautifully. It acts as a great reminder to all of us that women can act as ‘feminine’ as they like, there are absolutely no excuses for gender-related violence. And honestly, I couldn’t agree more.
Featured image via pchin on Flickr / CC BY-SA
