Mahal kita

I learnt of Ms Ris Low’s predicament only through Mr Brown’s podcast, which featured both a song and its music video, which parodied Ms Low’s interview. Any person, even those not generally interested in pop culture like myself, should see it, and read the noise on the Web about it. Some were critical about it, some were amused, some spiraled into lengthy, philosophical discussions about what makes us Singaporean.

It’s crazy, and I think Straits Times shouldn’t go on to publish it online, to do justice to her. Sometimes, such people don’t know that what they are doing can be quite embarassing, and if I were in such a position as Ms Low’s, I would be excessively grateful if someone came towards my help and tell me about it honestly, and protect me from embarassment. But it’s too late now.

Not surprisingly, not many have gone on to question the greater issue: the existence of beauty pageants.

Beauty pageants should be banished once and for all. Miss Singapore, Miss World, Grid Girls, America’s Next Top Model—all of them. Because beauty is absolutely (I say again, absolutely) not something to be flaunted in public, or much worse, contested in the eyes of the public. Women need to learn the proper use of their inward and outward beauty, just as men should learn where to direct their strength and violence.

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P.S.: While a part of me is sympathetic towards Ms Low, I think she ought to face the music too. She shouldn’t have wasted her time engaging in such trifles, and it was perhaps better if she had just worked on where she is now so well known to be starkly lacking, and become the beautiful young lady (not in the skanky-whore kind of way, of course) that she could without difficulty become.