Most of us are probably familiar with the landmine that is social media, and how harsh people can be.
Local beauty pageant Miss Grand Singapore, which is organised by investment management company AO Ventures, recently posted a video featuring 14 of its finalists.
The delegates were seeing partaking in a ‘This or That’ challenge, which had them catwalking in pairs before choosing an answer.
Unfortunately, the video touched the wrong side of the internet, with many netizens criticising the finalists for their looks.
“No minimum standards for this contest?” asked one netizen, while another joked: “Are they the crew?”
One particularly harsh comment read: “Totally CMI (can’t make it), there are so many pretty ones and only these ones participate.”
That comment got this reply from the organiser: “Thank you for the women empowerment support! They don’t have make-up nor filter at early morning training (sic).”
This sparked a long chain of replies from other netizens, with one explaining that a beauty pageant is a contest about, well, beauty, yet people who are judging the delegates for their looks are getting called out.
While we see why the organiser needed to stand up for the women, it begs us to ask: Why post a video of the finalists with no make-up or filters on in the first place?
In this social media age, basically anything on the internet is subject to judgement, be it good or nasty. So why give netizens ammunition?
What do you think? Is it more important for beauty queens to look real and relatable? Or should they always put their best face forward, considering it is competition based on looks after all.