Last Saturday night was my biggest waste of 150,000 cedis since I have been in Ghana. To say that the Miss Universe Ghana pageant was a disappointment would be a gross understatement. At best it was boring. At worst it was contrived and choreographed.

I bet, the highlights of the pageant were the set design, the clothing, and a little dance number done by an anonymous white woman that could give any ‘mapuka’ dancer a run for her money. Let us first look at the pageantry culture. It seems that everywhere we turn in Ghana, somebody is looking for sponsorship to hold some pageant or another.

I mean honestly, do we really need more pageants? I mean we have Miss Ghana and Miss Universe Ghana, which we sanction, because the goal of those is to eventually compete internationally at the Miss World and Miss Universe pageants.

But what of the other frivolous and dare I say useless pageants? At our universities, women compete in their numbers in different hall pageants.

There are others as well, such as the Queen of The World Pageant. The Queen of the World? Why is this pageant necessary? I’m thinking that perhaps we, as a culture have gone a little overboard with this pageant fever.

Little girls everywhere in Ghana are busy hoping to be the next Miss Something. Perhaps that is harmless in and of itself, but when little girls start thinking that to end their financial woes, all they have to do is win a pageant and they’ll have money, fame and a brand new car, I start to have problems with that.

Now, it is my understanding that the women that participate in the Miss Universe Ghana Pageant are supposed to represent the cream of the Ghanaian crop. If that is the case, then as a nation, we are in dire straits. There were various sections that required the ladies to show off their brainpower as well as sections for the ladies to show off their “Barbie doll” power. The “Barbie Doll” power was extremely easy for most of these ladies since the majority of them were models. Stand tall, Look pretty. That wasn’t too difficult. What proved to be overpoweringly difficult for some of them were the brainpower sections of the pageant.

The first being a debate about Karl Marx’s statement, that, religion is opium to the masses. The ladies filed in six on one side, and six on another. One side was for the other side was against. The arguments were wooden and rehearsed. The arguments jumped back and forth with the eventual final six doing most of the talking…let me stand corrected, all of the talking. The other six didn’t even bother to open their mouths.

Now besides knowing what a rehearsed answer sounds like, the host of the show gave them away. After a tiresome ten minutes of debate that the audience was subjected to, the host recapped the arguments. Keep in mind that he never wrote down a single argument from any of the ladies and not five minutes prior to the debate mixed up the names of the participants. He then proceeded to read from his cue card and attributed certain arguments to some of the contestants.

For instance, “Stephanie, you said…” “Fafa, you then argued…” Now more than anything, this was insulting to the audience. First we were subjected to such a boring debate, but then to know that all the participants had merely memorized and regurgitated, or chewed and poured was insulting. It was especially insulting when we later realized that most of the ladies could not answer the simplest of questions let alone argue a point of Karl Marx.

This brings us to the “Trivial Pursuit” section of the pageant. The girls were given series of questions to answer in one minute. What was especially funny is that some of them answered the questions before the questions were even asked. Actually scratch that. What was especially funny was how one girl who previously, in the debate section, had made such strong statements, could not answer one simple little question.

What was the question? The question was, “If you have three eggs and you take away two, how many eggs do you have left?” She said two.

And when she was asked if she wanted to stick to that answer, she happily said yes. Last I checked, three minus two was one. Actually, none of her answers matched the questions that she was asked. It was almost as if, she had opted to cheat on an exam but was given the wrong answers…but that’s just my opinion.

In fact, many of the questions asked proved difficult to my companions and me. For instance there were questions of British foreign policy and questions about who built the Taj Mahal. Who has the answers to these questions just sitting in their head…the winner apparently?

And now to add one of my favorite parts of the pageant. One young lady was asked what her most prized possession was. She said it was her computer…and then proceeded to give a pat answer about technology development, just like the other girls.

She was also asked a question about Ghana’s development in an international scope. I won’t spoil it for those that haven’t seen the pageant, but she actually worked in the word Xenophobia. Now this would not be so unusual had she not been one of the ones that could not do simple subtraction. I seriously doubt she could spell the word computer, let alone the word xenophobia. And finally, I would like to discuss the option of appearing in multiple pageants. In my eyes this constitutes a serious conflict of interest. But then again, that is just my opinion. FYI, the winner of the Pageant came in third in the Miss Ghana Pageant. There are women that continuously participate in pageants until they finally win one. I will not mention any names, but I am sure everyone knows whom I am referring to. Whatever happened to losing gracefully? And with all the time participating in pageants, who has time for other things?

Let me conclude this by saying that the first runner up was robbed. Anyone who was there knows it, and anyone who will watch the pageant on television will know it as well. And no I do not know the first runner up. We have never met. I am actually friendly with the young lady that did win. I just do not believe that she deserved to do so. If these pageants are supposed to foster healthy competition, and a sense of “may the best person win,” then Miss Universe Ghana fell short of its goal.

If the purpose of the pageant was for the organizers to pick one girl they could work very well with and that would represent their interests with the sponsors of the pageant, then their goal was met. The winner was very pretty and she is very sweet, but she did not deserve to win. The first runner up deserved to win because she answered the final question with the most intellect and poise. The winner gave the exact (same)answer as the second runner up. And I mean verbatim, folks. If this is how we prepare for our pageants, is it any wonder that Ghana has never won an international pageant?