When a beauty pageant becomes a feminist frontier

Erica Robin is forging a glitzy new path for Pakistani women this week as she glides onto the Miss Universe stage in El Salvador.

Ms. Robin, who hails from Karachi’s minority-Christian community, is Pakistan’s first-ever contestant. Shortly after landing at the pageant site, the 20-something model told her Instagram followers she felt “blessed” that “a woman from Pakistan gets the chance to meet and bond with almost 90 stunning delegates from all over the world championing equality, purpose, and sisterhood.”

Miss Universe fans – and coordinators – have heralded Ms. Robin’s ascent as a step toward greater diversity and inclusion. But back home, not everyone is celebrating.

From the moment she won the Miss Universe Pakistan title in a qualifying pageant this September, Ms. Robin has faced intense backlash from conservative segments of Pakistani society. In these circles, her pageant run is being portrayed as incompatible with the majority-Muslim country’s values. Sen. Mushtaq Ahmed of the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami political party described Ms. Robin’s participation as “shameful.” Others demanded the government denounce the Miss Universe pageant altogether. 

Indeed, furor around Ms. Robin’s bid for the diamond-and-sapphire-encrusted crown has stirred debate about what it means to respect women in a place like Pakistan, where society is stratified along the lines of faith, gender, morality, and economic status. 

Sociologist Nida Kirmani argues that while beauty competitions are premised on the objectification of women and responsible for promoting unhealthy standards of beauty, “the objections of the religious right stem more from wanting to control women’s bodies than protect their rights.”

Representing Pakistan

Ms. Robin’s participation is being celebrated by organizers of the 72nd Miss Universe pageant, which concludes on Saturday in a televised finale. Like other beauty competitions, Miss Universe has often been criticized for being misogynistic or, at best, frivolous. That’s not lost on Paula Shugart, president of the Miss Universe Organization.

“People joke about pageants and world peace, but I believe it’s true,” she says. “The more people from different backgrounds we can bring together, the more we can improve our international understanding.”

Courtesy of Miss Universe

Erica Robin, who won the Miss Universe Pakistan title in September, hails from Karachi’s minority-Christian community.

For her part, Ms. Robin has been busy promoting Pakistani fashion, quoting the Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai on social media, and advocating for Smile Train, a charity that sponsors cleft operations in Pakistan and beyond. Tonight, the competition enters its preliminary round, which includes the swimsuit event. Ms. Robin is wearing a burkini out of respect for Pakistan’s cultural values. 

In the city of San Salvador on Saturday, the 2022 Miss Universe will pass her tiara along to one of this year’s 85 contestants.

Yet even as Ms. Robin proudly sports her “Pakistan” sash over a series of glittering gowns, many at home are working to disown the beauty queen. 

The religious right’s sway

The Pakistani public, which is approximately 97% Muslim and awaiting national elections, has not historically voted for religious parties in large numbers. But though the religious right has never won enough seats to form the federal government, it has frequently succeeded in weaponizing issues of faith and morality.

“The religious right in Pakistan has always been able to create a hysteria around anything they label as ... un-Islamic,” says the journalist Zebunnisa Burki. “As soon as you say that, the government is on the back foot, and it doesn’t matter which government it is.”

Such pressure forced Pakistan’s caretaker administration to clarify that the Miss Universe Pakistan beauty pageant was a private competition with no connection to the Pakistani state. According to the caretaker minister of information, Murtaza Solangi, who issued the clarification, conservative lawmakers and journalists were demanding that Erika Robin and her competitors in the qualifying pageant be “stopped, arrested, and prosecuted” because they were “disgracing the country” and “posing a danger to Islam.”

“But why should the government of Pakistan take any action?” he says. “Are we the morality police or something? When it’s not a state or government activity and they [the contestants] do not represent the state or the government of Pakistan, as private citizens they can do what they want.”

Expanding possibilities for women

In the Global Gender Gap Index report, which compares 156 countries by how effective they have been at reducing gender inequality over time, Pakistan ranks near the bottom in three out of four metrics. The country places 145th for economic participation, 135th for educational attainment, 143rd for health and survival, and 95th for political empowerment. 

Against this backdrop, there are some who believe that Ms. Robin’s exposure as a Miss Universe contestant can have a positive impact. Human rights activist Sherkan Malik says that women in Pakistan are confined to the domestic sphere, “so there is a net positive to seeing a Christian Pakistani woman who speaks well and carries herself well on television.” 

Conservative opposition to the pageant, according to Mr. Malik, is an attempt to maintain the patriarchal order. “They [outraged conservatives] are not trying to protect women,” he says. “It’s just chauvinistic disdain. ... They’re saying, ‘How dare a woman choose.’”

For others, the controversy around the pageant betrays the country’s fixation with its international image.

“We’ve only had two kinds of image that we’ve been obsessed with,” says Ms. Burki, the journalist. “One is our moral image and the other is our security image. ... Morality is taken care of by the religious right and security is taken care of on an institutional level, and that’s it – the rest of it doesn’t really matter.”