Sousan Hammad, The Electronic Intifada, 8 January 2010
(Sousan Hammad is a writer and journalist based in the Palestinian city of Nazareth.)
"One of the travesties of living in a colonized environment is that the inferior, or oppressed, aspire to win admittance to the Western world. There seems to be an emerging trend of this type of appeasement, where submission has replaced the revolution. The introduction to spectacles, like the breaking of a Guinness record for the largest plate of kanafeh and the search for a national beauty queen, are just two examples of how absurd practices are coming to be seen as normal in Palestinian cities......
Occupied Miss Palestine canceled
In Ramallah, the circumstances were different. The inaugural West Bank beauty pageant was set to run on 26 December (a day prior to the first anniversary of the Israeli-led war on the Palestinian people in Gaza). But five days before the competition, Palestinian Authority (PA) officials decided to cancel the event because of the "conflicting schedule."
Hamas published a press release prior to the PA's decision, stating that such a contest "completely contradicts Palestinian values and traditions." The statement added, "Showing beautiful girls in front of the mass media and the audience while our people in Gaza are suffering ... is rejected and is considered a blind imitation of Western traditions."........
The tragedy, here, is not only the transformation of women into fetishized commodities, but the belief that these events will create a sense of normalcy in Palestine. While both pageant organizers might mean well, their yearning for recognition and appeasement from the West only places them in a static and inferior space where they are devaluing the Palestinian struggle. If only we could convince them otherwise. This is why we must first decolonize the mind before we decolonize the land."
(Sousan Hammad is a writer and journalist based in the Palestinian city of Nazareth.)
"One of the travesties of living in a colonized environment is that the inferior, or oppressed, aspire to win admittance to the Western world. There seems to be an emerging trend of this type of appeasement, where submission has replaced the revolution. The introduction to spectacles, like the breaking of a Guinness record for the largest plate of kanafeh and the search for a national beauty queen, are just two examples of how absurd practices are coming to be seen as normal in Palestinian cities......
Occupied Miss Palestine canceled
In Ramallah, the circumstances were different. The inaugural West Bank beauty pageant was set to run on 26 December (a day prior to the first anniversary of the Israeli-led war on the Palestinian people in Gaza). But five days before the competition, Palestinian Authority (PA) officials decided to cancel the event because of the "conflicting schedule."
Hamas published a press release prior to the PA's decision, stating that such a contest "completely contradicts Palestinian values and traditions." The statement added, "Showing beautiful girls in front of the mass media and the audience while our people in Gaza are suffering ... is rejected and is considered a blind imitation of Western traditions."........
The tragedy, here, is not only the transformation of women into fetishized commodities, but the belief that these events will create a sense of normalcy in Palestine. While both pageant organizers might mean well, their yearning for recognition and appeasement from the West only places them in a static and inferior space where they are devaluing the Palestinian struggle. If only we could convince them otherwise. This is why we must first decolonize the mind before we decolonize the land."
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