Festivals and Beauty Pageants

Festivals and Beauty Pageants

7th May 2007

The Ati-Atihan festival in the Philippines is world renowned for being the biggest and best of its kind. The Dinagyang festivals is also cool, but not as well known. I hate to think how many tribes are involved. Maybe thrity? Forty?

The festival I attended in St. Agustin in Romblon with its five or so tribes is not on the same scale, but still lots of fun. The locals dressed up in their traditional costumes for a parade down the main street. Lorelei, Chris and I - being the foreigners that we are - were dragged into the parade.

Much like the Dinagyang, there was a formal dance competition. Us foreign folk were invited up on stage so that we could get a better view. We were placed behind (not beside. Sigh...) two former beauty pageant winners. The formal dances were very cool.

St Agustin has a big drive at the moment to steal some tourists from the very popular Boracay island to its south. Part of this effort saw the holding of a "Tourism Queen" beauty Pageant. There was another parade down the street highlighting the beauties as well as a formal ceremony in the evening. This was the eventual winner.

Two interesting things about the paegant:

The girls were young, but not super young
There were plenty of fifteen year olds on stage. I don't know about you, but I just don't feel comfortable with fifteen year olds prancing around on stage wearing next to nothing. Maybe it's a cultural thing. Maybe it's just not right.
The interview section
One of the stages of the beauty contest was a question and answer session. All the girls (not women) were asked a question. All but one of them responded in tagalog (the local language). The one girl who responeded in English gave something like the following in response to the question: "What would you most like to lose?":

I would not like to lose my engagement ring because... losing my engagement ring would... not lose my engagement ring. Losing my engagement ring would mean not having it. Thank you.

Hmmm.... maybe she should of stuck with English.

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