Miss Landmine Cambodia” Pageant Cancelled

blackbookmag.com

By

Rohin Guha

August 05, 2009

If you've been put off beauty pageants for good because of Carrie Prejean's glassy-eyed gay-hating and Jesus-loving theatrics, consider this pageant that goes tobenefit hot chicks who compete to win a prosthetic limb. Sure, on paper, "Miss Landmine Cambodia" sounds like the hack-hatched premise of a B-list dark comedy, but the driving spirit of the competition is noble. The title of this pageant was to be crowned to one of 20 victims who suffered from landmine explosions. All contestants were to be subject to a photo exhibition juried via internet voting campaign. And apart from all seeming gallows humor, the contest was to be an empowering demonstration for the disabled -- before it was shut down for being "too inappropriate."

Citing preservation of “honor and dignity of people with disabilities”—which isn’t antithetical to the pageant’s mission—Cambodia’s Ministry of Social Affairs’ decision to shut the pageant down appears all the more perplexing. Even more puzzling is the Prime Minister’s own beef against beauty pageants, especially in a pre-Prejean era, where he says he refuses to let a any kind of beauty pageant take place until the nation’s poverty is reduced by more than half. So what this means for the pageant, which is now in its second year, is that it just moves over to the web entirely, where voting will continue through World Disability Day on December 3.