The recent crowning of Ms Leah Kalunguka as the Miss Uganda 2014 has come with its fair amount of chaos. The franchise first came under scrutiny as a result of its desire to fuse beauty and agriculture, aided by the army, an institution that is undergoing domestication of an unprecedented scale. As is custom in the information era, social media picked up on it, but not for the reasons highlighted above. The bone of contention has since been the suitability of the eventual winner. Leah boosts of an impeccable skill set, a poultry farmer, software engineer among other impressive qualities. Articulate and confident, she is in some ways an embodiment of what Miss Uganda ought to be about – In some ways. The contrarian camp however, (full disclosure – a camp I am aligned with) has raised pertinent questions about her looks. The delivery of some of the dissent, granted has had certain deplorable undertones and the attacks in several cases indelicate. I assign that to the triumph of free speech over “political correctness”.
The real issue I want to amplify is the overreaction towards the group that is against the decision, by their own admission, due to their judgment of her looks as sub-par for a holder of that position.
The morality police, an ideologically bankrupt quota that roams social media endlessly, have swooped in. The epithets are not new, they label us Haters, Low – lives, with proclamations about our lack of “depth” and failure to cope with our own sordid lives rendering us perennially toxic, hateful and mean. There were several “shocked and appalled” s. Some went so far as to decry the breakdown of society and are behaving like the sky is falling. I am fascinated by this because I want to examine what it is about the Ugandan psyche that causes free speech to pose such a challenge to their conscience. It is true, as a nation we cannot claim to have been weaned on numerous open spaces for debate; we are trained monkeys towing authority lines. I suspect that may in part account for the irrational aversion to alternative views that conflict with our collective image as right and proper.
A member of my following (a thankless task) brought it to my attention that my notion of beauty needs to be readdressed but the case I am making that in a beauty pageant, outward appearance is a key parameter and if I peg my critique to that, how do I slide into the constituency of haters? A less than sanitized view about one’s looks at a beauty pageant is the bare minimum and should not have the ability to offend sensibilities in the way it has. One offers oneself to be recognized using a public platform, it should be expected that not everyone will be patronizingly supportive. We salute the farming endeavors and applaud her range of qualities but still objectively opine that by relatively universal metrics of beauty and beauty pageants, the central theme was overlooked in the clamor to market agriculture to the youth.
Beauty was sacrificed at the altar of pragmatism. As I always prescribe to several I come into contact with, always aim to stand at a safe distance from one’s moral high horse. This duplicitous populism and lazy opportunism , trying to squeeze high ideals of “race”,”depth”,”skin color” into their narratives , courting principles they don’t themselves uphold consistently and force feeding us their morality and prudishness shall not prevail. The pervasive nature as well as the construct of social media guarantees it because the other side shall always have an unfettered opportunity to call things the way they see them. Communal moral-based censorship must be thwarted because is serves no real purpose apart from reinforcing a view of restraint. We need to leap into the modern era where people say how they feel and still don’t have to sit through lectures from mistresses, philanderers, thieves, sexual deviants, drug users (a composite look at the vociferous supporters of restraint on social media) masquerading as sympathizers with the plight of those hard done by the advent of spaces for free speech.
An Australian Comedian whose name escapes me now once explained how shocked he gets whenever he visits certain countries and people talk about how they were offended by his utterances. He further went on to indicate that “being offended” is not a registered physical ailment that should be taken into account because to his knowledge he had never heard anyone tell their physician “I got offended and then it slowly graduated into leprosy” (It was actually funny but you sort of just had to be there). I am inclined to agree with his observation. It is my considered opinion that those for or against Leah must not extend either side’s preferences/disgruntlement and tailor them for self promotion or to sully the good name(s) of holders of different sentiment.
