Miss Great Britain Zara Holland has been stripped of her title after having sex with fellow contestant Alex Bowen on ITV2 reality show Love Island.
The official Miss Great Britain Twitter account released a statement saying that the decision had been taken with “great regret”, adding:
“We pride ourselves on promoting the positivity of pageants in modern society and this includes the promotion of a strong, positive female role model in our winners... The feedback we have received from pageant insiders and members of the general public is such that we cannot promote Zara as a positive role model moving forward … We wholly understand that everyone makes mistakes, but Zara, as an ambassador for Miss Great Britain, simply did not uphold the responsibility expected of the title.”
As if Holland hasn’t already suffered enough after spending the past two weeks stuck on an island with a bunch of sexist men talking about “leathering” the female contestants and boasting of “letting” their girlfriends out so other men could admire them before taking them home. Now she has been hung out to dry by a group that has collectively dissected her sexual behaviour and found it wanting, publicly describing her decision to sleep with Bowen on the show as a “mistake”.
After facing a backlash from Twitter users accusing the pageant of sexism and slut-shaming the 20-year-old, the account tweeted: “To be clear we have no problem at all with sex – it is perfectly natural. We simply can’t condone what happened on national tv.”
Thus, Miss Great Britain provided a fascinating insight into the outdated, double standards ingrained into the modern beauty pageant.
In fairness, the organisers of Miss Great Britain aren’t entirely ignorant of how archaic the pageant is; their website enthusiastically reminds readers that the first ever winner won seven guineas and a swimsuit, in an exercise designed so that “men could enjoy watching pretty girls”. A quick glance at the 2013 finalists photograph on the website suggests that very little has changed: identikit women are lined up like cattle, with identification numbers to boot.
An organisation that judges women on how sexy, thin and attractive they are to men has publicly humiliated and degraded its own winner for going on a television programme all about being sexy, thin and attractive to men. When these women are passive objects, the pageant revels in and profits from their sexual attractiveness. But heaven forbid they should actually live a real life or follow through on that titillating promise. The idea of them taking ownership of their own bodies and desires is apparently unthinkable, unless it is done in secret.
It all plays into the double standard that sees young women facing enormous pressure to be as sexy as possible, yet lambasted if they dare to step outside the realm of the watched object and into the role of the self-possessed woman. Looking attractive is all well and good, but dare to engage in actual sexual activity and suddenly you’re a slut, a slag, a whore, while your male peers mysteriously become studs, lads, or players. It is often the court of public opinion that disgraces and shames women for sexual activity: a pattern replicated in the Miss Great Britain statement, which makes it clear that it is only after receiving feedback that they decided Holland could not be promoted as a role model – a decision based on other people’s judgments rather than her own actions.
The move is particularly ironic given that the pageant only recently updated its rules to allow married women and mothers to take part (they were banned from entering until 2013). So having had sex in the past is clearly acceptable, just not in the future.
Of course, Miss Great Britain isn’t alone in its double standards – they were also on full display on Love Island itself, where fellow contestants described Holland as an “absolute idiot” and a “stupid girl”, while Bowen was reported to have escaped “unscathed by scandal”. In this case, as in so many, others benefitted richly from a young woman being torn down: ratings rocketed after Holland was dethroned.
Stripping Holland of her title is further proof that no matter how hard women try to play by society’s sexist rules, they still can’t win.