Pageants for married women raise difficult questions about gender

The most unfortunate part about such pageants is that it takes the original problems about women’s beauty pageants and compounds them with another issue: classifying women into categories based on their marital status

It’s 9 am on a Sunday and I’m at a hotel in Pune. As I make my bleary-eyed way to the breakfast buffet – which always leaves me in all kinds of spiritual agony before and after, but never during – I come upon an unusual sight. A group of women who look about my age are dancing in the bar adjoining the breakfast lounge. I wonder if they have been dancing all night, but 9 am is too late even by hardcore party standards. And these ladies look quite sober. Allowing myself a longer glance, I notice they are wearing sashes across their torsos. “Mrs Maharashtra”, they proclaim, followed by a serial number. I proceed to the eggs and bacon, thoughts whizzing as quickly as a Neeta Volvo bus from Dadar to Aundh.

A sash has a tendency to reduce everything to a label. Men, and token women, standing in judgment over women’s bodies, and therefore, their beings(Photo imaging: Parth Garg)

To win, you must conform...it’s no surprise that the miss universe pageant was co-owned by Donald Trump close to 20 years