Shi Lim is one of our guest contributors for our series, MIRROR, in which we explore the relationship with oneself and others. Shi Lim was crowned Miss Universe Singapore in 2013, and has embarked on her acting career earlier this year while pursuing her Masters in Theology. Shi Lim hopes to help others through sharing her own experience.
I woke up one morning in mid-July this year to a few text message circulations of the first press release for the Miss Singapore Beauty Pageant 2017 contestants.
These girls received a torrent of online vitriol because they had been thrown into the limelight immediately without first undergoing proper grooming and training, and thus had failed to measure up to a public conception of how a beauty queen should look like.
Moreover, the social stigma of pageants as a joke and embarrassment, coupled with the impression that contestants are unduly narcissistic and vain, elicit an almost knee jerk response of online bashing that Singaporean netizens participate in en masse with almost malicious glee.
Because the Miss Singapore contestants were so emotionally affected by the cyber onslaught, the pageant had to halt all activities for three weeks.
Why can’t people be kind? Why do they feel the need to hate on others?
Reminders that these girls could be hurt were refuted with the popular idea that as long as someone is in the public eye, anyone can say anything they want about them.
Furthermore, any suggestion that these girls should be respected was met with the insistence that the very nature of pageants is objectifying – participants are permitting everyone to evaluate them freely on their bodies and looks. In this vein, the public can judge harshly and without restraint because it is only fulfilling what it has been invited to do.
If the girls are unable to handle such “feedback”, they should not have joined a pageant in the first place.
Hitting Home
But I could empathize with these girls because I know what it’s like to be a target of the cyber mob. As one of the finalists for Miss Universe Singapore 2013 (a different pageant), I received my share of ridicule from internet trolls after the photos of our first public appearance were posted on the Yahoo News website.
The range of commentary on me was wide, with a mild proclamation of “plain Jane”, to a creative description of my ears as sailboats that could take me around the world. Although cyberbullying is not a new phenomenon, you never really think online cruelty will happen to you, and nothing really prepares you for it when it does.
Soon after, the various online news articles announcing that I had won attracted countless humiliating comments made in – what seemed to me – overeager satisfaction. Everyone had an opinion, and they certainly did not care to hide it.
She’s too short.
Too tall.
Too big.
Too skinny.
Singapore really does send the ugliest girls to international pageants.
She’s going to be an embarrassment to Singapore.
She’s not good enough.
And I felt like I wasn’t good enough.
I admit I expected validation, some sort of public approval – the fact that I had received such a thorough thrashing online pummeled my self-esteem. You look into the pool of public opinion expecting it to support your view of yourself, but what is reflected is joltingly different from that image.
The cognitive dissonance was huge.
Two days after winning, I gave a live interview for Channel News Asia. A recording of it was posted on their Facebook page, and it drew hundreds of comments assailing me for everything from my appearance and the way I spoke, to my character and intelligence.
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me… no, they hurt. Especially when received in an impersonal deluge by often nameless and faceless strangers who treated insulting me like it was a sport.
Ignore them, came the general advice.
I found it impossible.
Was I really as inferior as they claimed?
Propelled by insecurity and a need for approval, I had a masochistic tendency to search out what netizens had to say about me.
Every harsh and negative comment read and reread hacked away at my mood and sense of self, and I slipped into depression after having lost most of my confidence. The cyberbashing continued all the way till months after the finals of Miss Universe 2013 held in Moscow, and it took more than a year for my self-worth and emotional state to heal.
Switching Roles
Years later, when I attended Miss Universe Singapore 2016, the remarks I overheard in the audience reminded me of the ordeal I went through.
People openly snickered and scored the girls upon ten, and gave running commentary on their unworthiness, faces, bodies, and perceived (lack of) intelligence. I was no longer its recipient, but the sanctimonious meanness of others left me ashamed that I had once been a willing participant in this spectacle.
Why had I paraded myself in front of people eager to degrade and objectify me by reducing my value and personhood to a few physical traits?
I felt that all pageant girls were viewed like pieces of meat hanging in a butcher’s shop, fair game for all to deride and leer at. But how could any of us complain, since this was what we had voluntarily signed up for?
Ironically, I was designated a judge for Miss Universe Singapore 2017. Now, I had to be the one scoring girls on their physical traits out of ten, deciding if a girl was “good enough” to win the title that would name her the most beautiful girl in Singapore.
Whereas I was once the judged, I was now in the position to criticize.
Being up close and personal with the contestants during the judging process allowed me to ask them questions, gave me the opportunity to know their stories and histories, and provided a better understanding of their development throughout the pageant.
I saw how self-possessed and well-spoken these young women were, and realized that no one can be reduced to the situations they are in. In any setting, people need to work hard, battle personal obstacles, and overcome fears and insecurities.
Likewise, these girls were real individuals who needed to rise up to the specific challenges of a beauty pageant by mining within themselves courage, confidence, self-knowledge, and discipline. They were not merely mannequins strutting around in sparkly gowns and skimpy bikinis for the world to sneer at and disparage.
A Different Perspective
Being an official judge for Miss Universe Singapore 2017 meant I had to evaluate the girls according to a set of arbitrary standards that do privilege a narrow definition of beauty.
However, that was specifically in the context of the competition, and doing so did not erase their humanity, or necessarily reduced their worth to the degree they managed to fulfill those standards. Therefore, it would have been completely inappropriate and disrespectful of me to objectify or scorn the girls in any way.
People often cite freedom of speech as the basis for saying or writing whatever they want. But as Article 1 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares, “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood”.
As all are equal in personhood, exercising our rights requires our recognition of, and respect for, the rights and dignity of others. This means we have to use our words with responsibility, remembering that claiming a right to freedom of speech while disregarding the dignity of others immediately contradicts and invalidates our claims.
For this reason, we cannot bash or bully simply because someone is in the public eye. We may be entitled to our opinion, but we cannot be unkind, malicious, or mean.
As they stood in front of me during the judging, I admired the Miss Universe Singapore 2017 finalists for their grit and tenacity.
Perhaps it was the hubris of youth that compelled me to join a pageant back in 2013. But I doubt my ability to present myself before a panel of judges again, fielding questions testing everything from my values to international relations, and all the while conscious of my appearance while maintaining impeccable posture and exuding personality.
I recognized how much fortitude these girls had. Despite the nature of pageants, these young women could not be objectified. If we did objectify them, it is only because we had chosen to turn a blind eye to their humanity.
