Bolivia: the bleaching of beauty

The Christian Science Monitor published an article yesterday on the emphasis on physical beauty in Bolivia. To wit, the stress is on winning beauty pageants and enrolling in modeling schools. However, part of the article touches on the concept of what is “beautiful” has to do with discarding their indigenous background and culture in order to copy the look of being light-skinned:

“For all the smiles, the pageants do underscore the sadder reality of racial divisions in a country that is split geographically between the more affluent east and the west, inhabited mostly by indigenous groups. In 2004, Miss Bolivia drew controversy for saying that Bolivia was only known as an indigenous country: ‘I'm from the other side of the country,’ she said publicly. ‘We are tall, and we are white people, and we know English.’”

The emphasis one race being inherently better or prettier to another is eerily reminiscent of ex-Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo’s policy of “blanquismo” in the mid-20^th century. Such a notion seems unusual in Bolivia, a country where a vast majority of the population has some indigenous background and an indigenous leader in Evo Morales.

Roque Alvarenga, a makeup artist who coordinates pageants, tries to justify the concept of white equals beautiful:

“Pageants can help export Bolivia tourism to the world, which thinks we are only one type of person, that we are only indigenous.”

Ultimately those that lose the most are not foreigners who supposedly see Bolivia as a country of one race but rather young Bolivians that are made to learn that beauty is only skin deep, especially if one’s skin is of a darker hue.

Links- Christian Science Monitor, Wikipedia, CIA, BBC News

Image- Discover Vancouver (Photo of Miss Bolivia 2006)