Get your wobbly bits out

Show off your muffin tops with pride, well they are in Iceland.

The first ever 'real beauty' pageant is being held in April. The rules are you have to be over 20 years old and have had no cosmetic surgery (bad luck Cher). Their looking for inner beauty

So that’s my synopsis, now for the really interesting bit...


I sourced it at The Sun website (who else). In true red top fashion they took the subject in a jovial manner, making fun and coining it a pageant for ugly people. They completely missed the message of inner beauty and twinned it with a picture of ' the bride of Weinstein'. They gave it little space on the website and used it as trivia, rather than news.

The news BBC website had more grace when approaching the subject, but yet again gave little space to the subject. While they saw the point of the pageant they gave little concern. They did not even give a link to the website. This again came across as trivia and worked as a nib rather than a news story.

Across the pond, well Iceland, had a more interested view than western websites. Obviously a localised story will instantly make it more readable, but they gave it more space, and had more sources. They talked to the promoters and took it very seriously. This story uses the beauty within as a hook, unlike western press who poke fun at the idea.

Surprisingly American press had a very positive attitude to this piece. They gave space on the page and again used many sources to create a more informed news piece. This surprised me as I assumed the land of the size 0 would have looked down its nose at a 'beauty within' pageant.
Yahoo gave integrity to the story and treated it with respect.

An interesting perspective was from a European website. They treated the subject as a social experiment, to test and 'challenge' western ideas of beauty. They treated it as radical act, trying to reverse stereotype and ideology. This was the most refreshing news piece I read. It didn't recycle the same angle, it produced a new perspective.

So that’s what I found, I was really surprised by the emotive style of American press and the suppression of the story in British press. I was surprised no British press included the Dove campaign for inner beauty; I thought this would have tied the story nicely into current affairs. With the campaigns for abolishment of size 0 in the press, I thought it would have made this story much bigger than it was.