Angola is a deeply fucked up place. I did a paper on that nation for a sub-saharan geography class-

Aparthied south africa had an intentional stratagy of destabalizing its neighbors, blowing shit up for giggles. Throw in the nifty US/Soviet proxy war (with castro in to boot) and you get a country covered in landmines. The largest heavy armor tank battle between WWII and Gulf I was fought there. The “socialist” president funnels the offshore oil revenue into his pocket, and back in the late 80′s on into the 90′s, they would intentionally re-mine the roads so that local cheiftans (who controlled the airstrips) could cut off outside contact and keep the local population in check by controlling all the airlifted UN food aid. The only good thing to happen there in recent years was when they finally tracked down and killed Jonas Savimbi, the “capitalist” gurrilla/US proxy/meglomaniac. With him gone, at least nobody is putting out even more landmines.

They don’t have crutches. If you survive the mine, you will be a beggar, and you will be lucky to a pipe. or a stick. One account I read talked about a woman who had basically ended up with scoliosis due to her heavy, uneven improvised crutches. This was just an aside in a story about election rigging.

This issue THE LANDMINE issue, is the one that is viscerally important. I’m really glad to see some / any mention of this, anywhere.

This sounds like some peace corps kidz pipe dream, but it may actually help some people.

This is Angola. They shoot people who show any form of civic engagement. The president’s personal bodyguard/secret police “the ninjas”, face absolutely no reprocussions for shooting you. Being near a presidential motorcade can get you killed. Being a journalist will get you killed. Asking for things in an organized, public fashion would proably come in #3.

This project appears to be funded by the EU and some nordic countries.
And one artist guy who comes across as kind of a jerk, but does acknowledge some of the issues raised here.

http://www.miss-landmine.org/misslandmine_press_eng10.html

(I say acknowlege, not actually address. He basically says everything on the Angolan side is ducky, and that the old-school feminists who run western aid organizations go completely blank on him whenever he uses the words “beauty pagent”.)

A beauty pagent at least has a naritive framework. The idea of “click on the link to look at desperately poor mangled people from a forgotten third world dictatorship” really lacks, uh, any sort of appeal whatsoever.

On another note, anybody see the class stuff? Like, how a lot of the staged shots are done in bussness settings, on cellphones? or the woman with the roll posed on top of that safe?

Bling! Comes to Angola.

Yeah, no. How does being objectified by men empower these women? Just because they were traditionally “unfuckable,” and now they’ve been glamorized, does not mean that they are turning the patriarchy on it’s head. They’ve just been co-opted. If, for example, there was a program for disabled people to go out in the community and be visible and demand acceptance as full human beings, that would be wonderful. But this pageant just has the women stand there and be objects for “designers” to dress and men to ogle.

The fact that this is going to be used to promote designer clothes just reaffirms my belief that the world culture doesn’t care about people with disabilities unless they can use them to make money.

What’s the main organization working on this issue? FCNL? Amnesty International? Something else?

But, of course, these women aren’t actually competing as normal women. It’s not a pageant for Miss Angola — it’s Miss Landmine Angola. And it’s not even Miss Amputee Angola, which would at least refer to the woman’s body and not the weapon that injured her.

On the other hand, disability within different cultures is treated differently. Disabled babies in Ghana, for example, are routinely killed at birth. If not, they spend their lives begging on the street, according to the documentary film Emmanuel’s Gift. If the range of options are similar in Angola, than simply having your picture taken because of your beauty is a hugely accepting thing if you’re disabled. If it means some self-worth where society has none for you, or maybe a brief modeling job or access to a better prosthetic or even a better crutch than you’ve had, well, I don’t really know how to be fully against that.

Then again, this isn’t a pageant for all disabled people either — the visibly congenitally disabled usually ranking below those with acquired disabilities in all cultures. It’s a pageant for those who were normal and thus, worthy, but are not normal anymore.

I don’t think it’s particularly subversive, though, mainly because there’s nothing about the beauty pageant format that seems altered — it’s very much designed for the male gaze. I have a problem labeling someone’s presence where they’ve previously been absent as subversive. Action is subversive, not mere existence.