Meet Miss Beautiful Morals, 2010

[JCMach1]

Please have a look at this to see the kind of society we are voting against on Tuesday...

Meet Zainab al-Khatam, the winner of Saudi Arabia's second annual pageant celebrating "spiritual and filial beauty". Each contestant reportedly underwent training in "psychology, culture and law in Islam; family relations, public rights, social skills, health knowledge, volunteering ... as well as cosmetics".

Established last year by a Saudi women's organisation, and implying criticism of western beauty contests, the Miss Beautiful Morals competition focuses not outward appearances but on inner beauty... But what, exactly, are these values? This year's winner is a blind 24-year-old woman who had managed to exhibit superlative "respect for her family, parents and society" – by staying at home after she had finished her studies, in order to take care of her family. She suffered in dignity and accepted her lot, her martyrdom becoming all the more poignant because of her disability...

But women wear the cloak of sutra more readily in order to prove their good breeding, and indeed compete in their own informal pageants after which the "winners" are selected. The prize may be marriage to an eligible bachelor who has heard through the female grapevine that the candidate dropped out of school to take care of her ailing mother, or gave away her inheritance to build her family a new home. It appears churlish not to honour these feats of selflessness, but sutra is disempowering and implants the spirit of compliance, ensuring that no matter how far afield the body travels, the mind is subjugated... http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/31/saudi-morality-queen-beauty-pageant