DHARAMSALA, India - The new Miss
Tibet is swimsuit-shapely, talented, articulate and
dedicated to Tibetan culture and the Dalai Lama. Tashi
Yangchen is a 24-year-old computer engineer from Sikkim,
India. Her actual politics are vague, but when it comes
to Tibetan culture, her passion is powerful. She
recently was crowned here in north India, despite
criticisms from those who say the very idea of a Miss
Tibet and a swimsuit competition flies in the face of
Tibetan Buddhist ideals and traditions.
Critics
say the very idea of a Tibetan beauty pageant flies in
the face of Tibetan values and culture and apes the
worst kind of Western exhibitionism. The Tibetan
government-in-exile condemned it, saying beauty is only
skin deep, calling the event a travesty of traditional
Tibetan culture and urging a boycott. No matter, more
than 2,000 people showed up for the contest, part of a
longer Tibetan Free Spirit Festival.
"It is a dream
come true," Yangchen said when she was crowned on
October 1. "I will try to mobilize the power of the
youth, especially the women's, to raise Tibet's profile
in the international arena and follow the path of His
Holiness the Dalai Lama."
She is the
third-annual winner of the title and the designation,
"Woman of Wisdom From the Roof of the World". The honor
carries major responsibilities - representing Tibetan
culture worldwide. And it carries a cash award of
Rs100,000 (US$2,190), a check presented to Yangchen by
the director of the Tibet Free Spirit Festival, Lobsang
Wangyal.
The five contestants were judged on the
basis of attractiveness, confidence, artistic ability or
talent and poise or stage presence. Apart from beauty,
they were judged during seven rounds over three days on
articulation, confidence and stage presence. The
physical criteria included figure, skin quality and
posture. Each woman delivered a speech on a topic about
Tibetan culture, history and current affairs. In the
talent round, all of them sang songs about Tibet, its
beauty and culture.
The contestants were Kalsang
Dickyi, Sonam Dikyi, Thinlay Dolma, Dhondup Wangmo, and
Yangchen - the winner.
The jury was comprised of
Time of India journalist Alvia Zaidi, social worker
Hemant Kumar, journalist Dainik Bhasker, and a model
from Pune, Priya Thal.
A
controversy The pageant, however, was not without
its complications. Just as the week-long festival kicked
off on October 1, a minor controversy raged within the
community, with the Tibetan government-in-exile
expressing its opposition to the competition. Samdhong
Rinpoche, Tibet's de facto prime minister, called it
"un-Tibetan and untraditional".
"Body is
the home of the conscience. Beauty is skin-deep and there
could be no such contest in which inner virtues could be
put to test" in this manner, he said in an interview
with the Indian newspaper The Tribune. Meanwhile,
billboards at high-visibility locations in Dharamsala
also expressed opposition to the beauty contest, urging
Tibetans to boycott the pageant.
Participants' view The organizers and
participants, obviously, do not see the beauty pageant
as a violation of Tibetan culture, in which modesty is a
virtue. Rather, the participants think the beauty
contest has in fact brought them closer to Tibetan
tradition - rather than distancing them from it.
Yangchen said the contest allowed her to go to
Dharamsala and learn about Tibetan culture and history
by meeting with experts in the fields of language,
history, culture and the arts.
For her, the most
emotional moment was her meeting with Palden Gyatso, an
exiled Tibetan political prisoner who suffered for 33
years in a Tibetan prison. "It brought tears to my
eyes," she said of meeting with Gyatso, the monk who has
chronicled his imprisonment in the book, Fire Under
the Snow. It is so moving to be in the presence of
someone who has been through all of this in reality, she
told Asia Times Online, in fluent English.
Considering such exposure to the culture of her
ancestors, she said, winning the contest is really
secondary. "I was brought up very well," she said,
adding that her parents supported her decision to join
the contest.
Another participant, Kalsang
Dickyi, 44, a hospital worker in Lhasa, may be the
most audacious of the participants. After hearing about
the pageant from a Tibetan from India, she crossed the
Himalayas to come to Dharamsala to participate in the
Miss Tibet contest - but not before she was hospitalized
in Nepal for a few months.
"Since there are no
avenues to develop my interest in Tibet, I decided to
leave Tibet and come to India," she said, speaking
perfect Lhasan Tibetan. "And I have always wanted to see
the Dalai Lama," she said, overcome by emotion. The
Dalai Lama, however, was not present.
While fluent in Mandarin and Tibetan, Dickyi
speaks the Sichuanese dialect of Mandarin at home in
Lhasa. After her hospitalization she looked tired, despite
her bright-red T-shirt and blue jeans.
Sonam Dikyi,
another participant, was also born in Lhasa but educated
in India. A daughter of an ex-political prisoner, she
had worked at a computer center in Dharamsala and now
lives in Nepal. "My parents told me, if you really
wanted to do something, then do it," she said. "I was a
bit nervous at first, but everyone here made me feel
very welcome and comfortable.
Beautiful and
flashing a magnetic smile, Thinley Dolma, 19, was the
youngest participant. She was born in northern India and
dropped out of school a few years ago. "I was not
interested in studies," she said. "I have always been
very interested in the fashion and the arts. My friends
tell me that since I am very tall for my age, I should
become a model."
Another participant was Dhondup
Wangmo, a commerce studies graduate of Delhi University,
who now works in New Delhi as a customer service
officer. She thinks beauty and brains could go together
and that Miss Tibet will be "great for [Tibetan] women's
rights".
"I am here to encourage them," she
said, laughing. Her goal is to work in the auditing
department of the Tibetan government-in-exile and put
her accounting education into the service of the Tibetan
community. "That is what I am interested in, financial
accounting," she said, brimming with energy and
confidence.
Debate on the modern and the
traditional Other Tibetan youth at the festival
and beauty pageant were also vigorously debating the
challenges of a culture that is trying to strike a
balance between the modern and the traditional.
Tenzin Pema, a student, said: "The Miss Tibet
beauty pageant is a very significant event in that it
depicts the young Tibetan women both as a part of the
traditional Tibetan culture as well as contemporary,
modern, clear-thinking independent young women."
But others see it as a part of Westernization,
which is not necessarily synonymous with modernization.
"Holding events like Miss Tibet is not good for the
so-called Tibetan foray into modernity," Tenzin Namdol,
a Tibetan student, wrote in a youth magazine, Tibetan
World. "Merely aping Western culture, and maybe their
concepts of modernity, does not at all ensure
modernity."
Elder Tibetans remain conservative.
"Given the situation of Tibet, this is just not the
right timing to start showing off your legs to the
West," said one outspoken Tibetan resident of
Dharamsala. He was referring to the swimsuit round when
the scantily clad women posed for photographers at a
swimming pool in a Dharamsala health resort.
Neutral observers are more balanced. Susan Chen,
a doctoral student specializing in Tibetan culture at
Atlanta's Emory University, said that while she is not
personally supportive of beauty contests in the Tibetan
community, she believes some Tibetan government
authorities also overreacted negatively to the pageant.
"While I am not personally supportive of the
event, I think it is an example of free expression," she
said. “They [the officials] went too far in publicly
condemning the event,” said Chen, who has been doing
field research in Dharamsala for nearly two years.
The Free Spirit Award This
year's Free Spirit Award went to Harvard student Meghan
Howard, who last December tucked a Tibetan flag into her
pantyhose, then unfurled it in protest during Chinese
Premier Wen Jiabao's talk at the Harvard Business
School. Actor Richard Gere was last year's winner.
Given the success of this year's contest, which
had five entrants instead of one last year, and given
that the festival increased from one day to six, it
seems the Tibetan beauty pageant is likely to become yet
another permanent addition to Tibet's unique exiled
culture.
Indeed, organizers say the Chinese
authorities in Tibet are also mimicking the exiled
Tibetans.
"Irrespective of our Miss Tibet
pageant, which was started in 2002 [and apparently
following our trend], a Tibetan Beauty Queen [pageant]
has been organized by the Chinese authorities in Tibet.
This gave us a good feeling," said Wangyal, the chief
organizer of the festival. "The youth in Tibet,
especially young Tibetan women, now have a new platform
to be themselves and to live like other women around the
world."
T N Khortsa is a Tibetan
journalist and author based in Taipei and Dharamsala. He
is completing a book titled Dharamsala: And Other
Stories of Tibet's Exiled Culture.
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Ugly row over Tibet beauty
contest
