mrveitch

I have twice been called upon to judge beauty/popularity contests at my school. The first was an English singing competition and the second a speech contest. I’ll talk about the singing competition here

The singing competition was more blatantly biased toward the “attractive” contestants. I was given a few slips of paper with vague categories written in Chinese with varying point values. Intonation was 3, choice of dress was 2 and singing ability was some other arbitrary number. I can’t sing, so I think anyone who can hit a high note is good and I tried to judge based on that plus whether or not they actually pronounced the words correctly. For the most part, the better their singing was the better their pronunciation was. 

There were 10 contestants (one was actually a full band) but I will focus on the 2 singers who created controversy at the judges table.

An attractive female stepped up to the microphone. I’ve forgotten what she sang but I remember that she started off incredibly strong, and faltered after the first line. Her pronunciation remained strong and her stage presence was great, and thus I gave her an 8. My cohort awarded the young lady a 6. When the numbers were counted, someone approached the judges table demanding to know who gave the young woman a 6. When he was found out, he was reminded that the young lady was very beautiful and deserved a much higher score. After much coaxing (harassment) the score was finally changed to an 8.

Another male singer who was an absolutely awful (forgot words, couldn’t pronounce most and sang the way I’m sure I sound in the shower) got 9’s from everyone most of the panel. I think I gave him a 2, because I liked his outfit and clothing choice is actually one of the point categories. When I asked other panelist what they thought of the performance, they replied that the singer was very handsome. One broke down into tears when told that he was an awful singer and his appearance has nothing to do with his English or singing abilities. She was furious at me for “unfairly giving this handsome young man such a low score”. 

Later, I learned that no one should be given less than an 8 to ensure that all competitors save face and no feelings are hurt. Had I been told this before hand, I would have taken it into account. Still, the competition was largely judged based on attractiveness and popularity which is incredibly unfair to the students who took the time to practice (some obviously didn’t), have a good command of English and are actually talented singers. The winners of the competition (it was a band) were actually the best in show though, so I managed to retain a little faith in the system.