Sunday, November 24, 2024 | Today's Newsletter | Login
Beauty aims to fight the beasts of Pakistan
Fearing retaliation in her homeland of Pakistan, Canadian beauty pageant organizer Sonia Ahmed is a believer of better being close than never.
Her Miss Pakistan pageant will this year be held in the Northern Indian city of Chandigarh, in India’s Punjab, a couple of hours away from the Pakistani border.
This will be the first time that the event will take place outside Canada since its inception in nine years.
Ahmed hopes the proximity of the event to Pakistan that will be staged in April will help increase the awareness of women’s rights in her homeland.
“When we first announced the pageant, we got hate mails filled with every kind of dirty abuse,” said Ahmed, who launched Miss Pakistan in Toronto at the age of 21.
“If we were in Pakistan, the reactions would have been violent. We were protected because the constitution of Canada doesn’t allow people to do anything more than protest,” she said, adding that her strongest supporters at the time were sponsors from the Indian community.
Ahmed admits the biggest bone of contention for the opponents of Miss Pakistan pageant is its bikini round. Asked by Indian media during her recent trip to Punjab if it would be better to avoid including bikinis, she said, “We had the bikini round up till 2007, and after that, even I felt this shouldn’t matter anymore. But when you go to international pageants, you have to wear bikinis, which puts our girls at a disadvantage. So we make them sign documents saying they’ll wear a swimsuit in other pageants.”
“It’s been 11 years since we first started Miss Pakistan World, and believe me, the clashes continue to date,’’ Ahmed told a gathering at the Chandigarh Press Club.
Ahmed says said she thought of a representation from Pakistan for the Miss World Contest to simply “change the perspective of women and others in Pakistan.”
Karachi-born Ahmed, a chartered accountant by profession, said that the move was highly criticised by the Pakistani community in USA, UK and Canada. While women in the entertainment industry saw participation in the pageant as a platform for progress in the industry, feminists in political parties opposed it strongly by terming it a move against their culture.
“In fact, all the Miss Pakistans who took part in the Miss World contest never returned to Pakistan for fear of being ostracised. Entries have gone down over the past few years drastically, simply because the girls fear it will create issues and risks for them in the country, noted Ahmed. So, as a confidence-building measure, Ahmed introduced the Mr Pakistan contest, and is happy with the response. “There has been almost a 50 per cent increase in the applications for the contest,’’ she said.
Fashion shows in Pakistan are few and far in between and are never publicized. “It’s a way to not give women the freedom to or express themselves,’’ said Ahmed.
Ahmed said she considers herself a driving force for the "progression” and "liberation" of Pakistani women on a global scale. She considers their event as a sort of civil rights movements with a mission to find positive, energetic role models who will represent and inspire the Pakistani youth within their great community as well as internationally.
Leave a comment
