FROM THE ARCHIVES: March 22, 2002
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Muslim Woman Raised in the U.S.
Nervously Dips Into Beauty Pageants
By MEI FONG
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Neelam Noorani has only one real bathing suit. It’s a floral purple number that her mother saved after her daughter stopped wearing it at age seven.
Now 20, Ms. Noorani needs another swimsuit. Born in Pakistan, she follows the Muslim faith and some of its rules of modest dress. For swimming, she wears a kind of abbreviated wet suit that covers her from neck to knees.
But she plans to enter the international Miss Earth beauty pageant this fall, for which she must wear something more revealing during the swimsuit segment. Ms. Noorani, a striking woman who stands 5 feet 6 inches and weighs about 110 pounds, won the Miss Pakistan Earth contest in Karachi in January without going through the bathing-suit parade. Fearing the anger of Muslim extremists, pageant organizers decided against holding one.
Instead, judges were told to guess if contestants had “nice healthy bodies” beneath their roomy tunic-and-trouser shalwar kameez costumes, says Muhammed Usman, the contest’s chief organizer.
Along with the Muslim world’s larger worries in recent years has come a small but growing pressure to hold beauty pageants. Like fast food, they are viewed as a barometer of Westernization. Some countries won’t hear of it. Some try to adapt the Western version to Muslim standards – not an easy task given the Islamic injunction that followers act and dress modestly.
Ms. Noorani finds herself caught between cultures. Her family moved to Virginia when she was three, and she holds both U.S. and Pakistani passports. She danced hip-hop and played basketball at Annandale High School. But she doesn’t date, wear short skirts or expect anything other than an arranged marriage. She returns to her native country for visits and has close family ties there.
A student of computer engineering at Northern Virginia Community College, she is preparing for a conventional career. Before that, though, she says she wants to try her hand at modeling or acting. An uncle is a film star in Pakistan’s Lollywood, named for the movie business centered in Lahore. Her mother was a recording artist who specialized in Islamic hymns. Looking to beauty pageants as a steppingstone, Ms. Noorani won the first one she entered, Miss Pakistan Earth.
Mr. Usman, the contest’s main organizer, hopes to put Pakistani beauty on the world map. The 22-year-old undergraduate at Griffith College Karachi, a Pakistan branch of the Dublin college, has been dreaming since 1994 about a Pakistani contest that could lead to international recognition. That was the year beauty queens from rival India swept the Miss World and Miss Universe crowns.
Both countries “have nuclear weapons,” Mr. Usman says. “Why not beauty queens?”
Last year, he roped in relatives, friends and his old high school to help fund Miss Pakistan Earth. Mr. Usman warned the contestants that the winner would automatically be entered in the Western-style Miss Earth pageant and would have to wear a swimsuit. The Miss Earth contest, which originated last year in the Philippines, has a “green” theme. Contestants are called “beauties for a cause.”
Mr. Usman also is organizing two male beauty pageants, Mr. Earth Quest and Mr. Pakistan Manhunt. He says “men in Speedos” are far easier for Muslims to accept than females in swimsuits.
Pakistan has had only a few beauty contests, such as Miss Karachi and Miss Indus Peninsula, and they were confined to larger cities. Rural areas are more conservative but disapproval can be found anywhere. “In Pakistan, if you take part in beauty contests,” Ms. Noorani says, “everyone thinks you’re a slut.” Currently back in the country on a promotional tour, she asked her actor uncle to hire a bodyguard for her – not to fend off fans, she says, but to protect her from Islamic extremists.
In countries where Islamic fundamentalism has flourished, beauty pageants have been forced to adhere to strict rules or have been forbidden by religious edicts. Egypt’s Grand Mufti Nasser Farid Wassel issued such a fatwa last year, saying beauty pageants with swimsuit segments contravened Islamic law – although Egypt continued to send a contestant to the Miss Universe contest last year. The grand mufti also proposed staging a Miss Morality contest that would showcase “the woman who adheres to righteous principles best,” according to Islam OnLine (www.islam-online.net), a Web site with headquarters in Doha, Qatar.
Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, allowed its citizens to participate in overseas contests during the 1960s, but it now bans the activity. Even in Malaysia, where the government is secular and the Muslim practice moderate, mullahs ordered the arrest of three Muslims in a Miss Malaysia Petite pageant in 1997. Where no explicit ban exists, social stigma usually keeps women out of contests.
Zohra Yusof Daoud would like to see the stigma removed. Now 48, and an activist for women’s rights who lives in Malibu, Calif., she was Miss Afghanistan in a 1972 contest. There wasn’t a swimsuit segment, and Mrs. Daoud, who fled the country after the Soviet invasion, liked it that way. She would like to bring beauty contests back to Afghanistan, so the world can see that Afghan women aren’t just “faceless people in burkas.” But it would have to be in a way “that incorporates Islamic values,” Mrs. Daoud says, and she isn’t sure how this can be done.
Several Muslim nations, including Indonesia, Pakistan, Brunei and Uzbekistan, have been holding beauty pageants as long as they don’t show too much skin. Contestants typically wear gowns, dance and get quizzed on current affairs. Few of the winners ever reach the international stage.
Esther Swan, a spokeswoman for the Miss Universe pageant, says would-be entrants who are Muslim often ask if they can skip the swimsuit segment. “They usually bow out” when they hear they can’t, she says.
January’s Miss Pakistan Earth was a low-key affair. Just 73 people turned up at Karachi’s Fosterian Academy, a small theater school run by Mr. Usman’s older sister, Yasmina, to watch the 18 contestants dance to local pop tunes, sing or recite Urdu poetry. Ms. Noorani, a Britney Spears fan, chose a Pakistani disco song called “Aja Suniya” (“Come Home, My Love”) to provide the beat for an energetic bump-and-grind. As the winner, she received $400 and temporary ownership of a three-pound zirconium tiara.
These days, Ms. Noorani is gearing up for October’s Miss Earth pageant, in Manila. She says she still isn’t comfortable with the idea of wearing a Western-style swimsuit in public. “The world has not seen much of my legs,” she says. But she likes the idea of showing off her beauty. “We are Allah’s creation,” she says. “We have a right to come out and represent womanhood.”
Such Western frankness made her “an outcast” among the other girls during the contest in Pakistan, she says. Unaccustomed to Karachi food, she also suffered from diarrhea. Back in America, her friends don’t always understand why she can’t go club-hopping or drink alcohol. She and her mother cut down on trips to the shopping mall after Sept. 11, fearing an anti-Muslim backlash.
“Don’t laugh,” Ms. Noorani says, “but I really want world peace.”
