While some women journalists are risking their lives in danger zones to get you the story, with little or no recognition, others are being rewarded for their beauty. That’s not to say that these women are not good at what they do, or don’t have more to offer, however, leave it to the chauvinistic male-driven organizations in the Middle East to reduce hard working female journalists into nothing but beauty pageants. It’s almost like they’re saying- “Yeah yeah honey it’s cute that you’re a journalist and all, but how about you just look at the camera and act pretty.” I don’t recall a single male journalist ever being rewarded for his looks? Do you? Merit people MERIT!
Anyways– now that I got that out of the way, last night MTV’s local news anchor Diana Fakhoury won the title of Miss Arab Journalist organized by “MC-International” beating out MBC’s Ola Fares and Qatar TV’s Nour Assaf. Many other TV personalities went home winners as celebrations took place at the Casino du Liban. Check out Ola Fares and winner Diana Fakhoury, but I can’t seem to find a single picture of the Nour Assaf. Anyone?
Check out Miss Mermaid Jounieh for more strange beauty pageants.
The New Bobbi Brown Face Masks: My Full Review
The Lebanese Celebrities Wedding Album
Angelina Jolie’s Wedding Dress- Who Will She Wear?
There are other awards for merit, this one’s for pretty.
And let’s face it, I can’t remember the last time I looked at a male arab journalist and thought to myself “hubba hubba, if I was a woman I’d be all over this one”. Sure something’s wrong with this, but in a way it’s not the end of world, and the most important thing you need to remember is: Breathe ! It’s the only way to avoid going insane in this country.
Well, I’m aware this is a beauty pageant, I enjoy the celebration of beauty and blog about it regularly.
But in this case, I feel it does more harm than good to these respectable journalists, it sexualizes them, objectifies them and reduces them to pretty girls by focusing less on their skills and more on their aesthetics.
It’s what the Middle East loves to do to its women, keep them as pretty little things for men to enjoy, turning them into eye-candy, and your point doesn’t stand, just cause half the men look like silverbacks doesn’t mean we should not give them the same treatment, and use shallow metrics to judge them by rather than reward them for their hard work.
You seem to have a good deal of understanding of this “MC International” competition; can you tell me more about it? Personally, I haven’t heard of it before and I didn’t know that “This is not one of those “sois belle et tais toi” pageants it showcases the beauty of women who have proven their intellect and their value in the workplace.” Is this something the organization claims? Or have you reached that conclusion based on their judgment criteria?
You are correct, it’s common practice for the world to objectify women, but I live in the Middle East and have noticed this alarming pattern on the rise here, more and more women are resorting to blotched plastic surgery in an effort to resemble real-life Barbie dolls, because they feel that it’s their beauty that would enable them to succeed and NOT their merit. Contests like this prove such concerns. For this reason; in the post I make the point that merit should be a judgment criteria rather than looks.
Finally ,can you also tell me about the last time an Arab Woman Journalist was rewarded for her work? ( try not to do an extensive Google search)
“it’s what the middle-east loves to do to its women”
Correction: That’s what the WORLD does to its women. I see your point, and in general beauty pageants for men aren’t all that common or popular, so the standard by which you’re judging this pageant is rather skewed.
I’m not saying such a pageant is a good thing, but I don’t think it’s an altogether bad thing either. There is a powerful message here, albeit unintentional, that smart powerful women can be pretty too, and vice versa.
This is not one of those “sois belle et tais toi” pageants, it showcases the beauty of women who have proven their intellect and their value in the workplace, and in that respect I don’t think it is altogether bad as far as beauty pageants go.
On the other hand your point would stand if female journalists were NOT being rewarded for their hard work, and instead judged solely based on their looks. We both know that isn’t true. We’re still far from achieving gender equality, certainly, but we do occasionally get some things right on that front.
You’re making the assumption that this pageant is helping the participating journalists succeed. I’m not sure that’s the case. My argument stems simply from the fact that it’s a pageant for journalists. The participating women are supposed to be smart successful women. How true that actually is, I don’t know.
I understand why you’re alarmed, all I’m trying to do is to point out a nuance. This is not an assessment of how good journalists these women are, it is a beauty pageant. The assessment of these women’s performance is a question of the standards at the media outlets they work for: Some might be sexist, others might not be. Just because these women are competing for their beauty in a pageant doesn’t necessarily mean that they are in the workplace. That’s all I’m saying.
get a life anyone?
Beautiful and intelligent, I am happy for her and wish her more success and prosperity.
The truth being, example i am a beautiful puertorican model, and yes people treat you nicer and doors open just because you are attractive, people dont like that but it is the truth, whether we like it or not. I am also very intelligent an honor student from newyork city where i was born at.
After all this nonsence miss mermaidness, this is going to be a normal pageant. but I thought you might be interested if you haven’t seen it yet.
https://www.facebook.com/missbyblos
In view of the difficulties faced by the journalists in the performance of their work, and their search for the right and exact information and in the absence of the appropriate, professional and intellectual environment of journalism as well as the difficulty of contacting the information sources, those working in the press and media area could hardly find another way than the web-sites and the local and international news agencies to be able to write their articles and news stories. The journalism in the Arab world is still relatively retarded if compared to the Western countries in terms of the means and tools that are available to the media and the provision of the success factors for those who work in this area. It seems clear that the Arab journalists and reporters want to contribute to make every step that may improve the job of the media professionals in our Arab countries and would make the journalism easier; we can only strive for the success of this idea and this service that the Arab media seems to be in dire need of. The basic service provided by our website http://www.sahafiy.com is primarily connecting the journalists from all the Arabic countries with each other as well as with researchers, scholars and specialists in all areas, in addition to the businessmen all over the world and the major global companies.