Re-inventing the African beauty pageant

School is back in session for post-secondary students in Ghana, but Ramatu Sidic has been hitting the books for weeks.

She’s getting ready for the biggest test of her life – becoming a voice for Ghanaian youth and a global ambassador for peace. It’s a heavy weight to bear on the slim shoulders of a young beauty queen, but then again, Sidic is more than just a pretty face.

She’s a 22 year-old who is using her newfound celebrity and articulate voice to promote peace on a continent where all too often young females are rendered voiceless. She is also dispelling some of the stereotypes surrounding beauty pageants in the process.

The Accra native recently took the crown at the 2010 Miss ECOWAS Ghana Peace Pageant. The annual competition, which is organised by Ghana-based event management group 702 Productions and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission, is promoted as a “cultural showcase of Ghanaian beauty and intellect.”

It is also a chance for the 14 delegates, from all over Ghana, to advocate for issues relevant to peace-building and development in the ECOWAS region.

This year, the focus took aim at the eradication of small arms and light weapons, of which an estimated 30 million are smuggled, sold and traded in Africa, according to Miss ECOWAS event organisers.

In order to take the diamond encrusted tiara, Sidic went armed with her own weapon: her intellect.

Along with 13 other delegates, Sidic had to attend a two week “boot camp” in Accra. After getting up for rigorous personal training sessions in the morning, Sidic studied everything from etiquette to developing world politics. This of course, came after passing an initial audition process where she was selected out of a group of 80 aspiring beauty queens.

This intensive prep may come as a surprise to some, as the idea of a beauty pageant conjures up images of coiffed curls, swimsuits and pageant-perfect smiles held in place with Vaseline, if there is any truth to old pageant rumours.

Yet at this year’s Miss ECOWAS 2010 pageant each young woman had clearly done her homework. The spotlight quickly shifted from the beauties themselves to some of the key issues in the ECOWAS region, like unemployment and peacekeeping.

The latter issue in particular, says Sidic, was the reason why the first-time pageant entrant decided to try out for Miss ECOWAS in the first place.

“I took part because of the theme,” says Sidic of the appropriately named Peace Pageant. “I thought it would put me in the right position to talk to people about peace. I can meet somebody on the street, explain who I am and have a reason to talk to them,” continued Sidic. “You’re a public figure, an ambassador. With this title, I’m in a position to extend my message to people outside my country.”

Sidic has a point. Many African queens have gone on to use their celebrity to become advocates for important issues in their countries.

Michelle Maclean, winner of the 1992 Miss Universe Pageant, went on to found the Michelle McLean Children’s Trust to promote the education and care of underprivileged children in her native Namibia. After her reign in 2007, Former Miss Ghana@50 winner Frances Tekyi Mensah started working with the United Nations Population fund to raise funds and awareness to the less than glamorous issue of Obstetric Fistula (OF).

The condition which affects two million women worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, is a hole in the birth canal, typically caused by several days of obstructed labour, and can lead to incontinence. It usually affects the poorest, least educated women in Africa and Asia.

Tekyi Mensah became so passionate about this issue, that she even enlisted the help of another pageant winner, Miss Liberia 2009, Shu-rina Wiah, to champion her cause in Liberia by creating outreach programs aimed at empowering Liberian women in rural communities affected by fistula.

It is the women in rural areas especially, says Sidic, who she wants to empower the most. “African women come from a deep cultural community. When you go to the villages, you’ll notice that most of the girls there don’t go to school. They are being trained to be wives. The kitchen is their office,” says Sidic.

The marketing student, who will represent Ghana in November at the 2010 Peace Pageant in Sierra Leone, is hoping to use her platform to reach these women. “They suffer from a lack of intensive awareness of the issues in their communities,” says Sidic, who also identifies with self-esteem issues often prevalent in rural areas and among young African women in general.

“I think I’m confident, but for four years I have wanted to join a pageant and I was told I was too short,” she says. “But I decided to just keep going and take the next step. This whole process has given me opportunities that other girls wouldn’t have.”

There was certainly a lot of beauty at La Palm Hotel. At the same time, important issues were being discussed, with a little thoughtful and articulate discussion. It wasn’t a display of women being objectified. They were being empowered by simply exercising something that women in so many other parts of the world have come to take for granted – their voice.

Antoinette Sarpong is a Canadian journalist based in Ghana with Journalists for Human Rights (jhr). This article is part of the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service.

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