In case you missed it, the army took over the running of the Miss Uganda pageant this year. Let that bizarre idea sink in for a moment.

This was certainly a beauty pageant with a difference. The swimsuit section was cast aside for an army-style boot camp, the milking of cows, and showing your skills at handling goats and sheep. At the awards ceremony, contestants were quizzed on farming techniques, as the hosts believe agriculture is a “Ugandan value” and should be celebrated.

The winner, Leah Kalanguka, is a former mushroom and poultry farmer.



A contestant learns how to milk a cow at the Bukalasa Agricultural College in Wobulenzi. Photograph: Rebecca Vassie/AP

But how did this strange marriage of beauty and agriculture come about?



The idea, apparently, is to make the agricultural sector attractive to young people. This makes perfect sense, after all, being covered in pig faeces goes hand in hand with being gorgeous, talented, and a woman...

This is what happens when armies are allowed to do more than march during national holidays. In case you’re wondering what the army has to do with agriculture, the president apparently felt the sector had been mismanaged by civil servants, so he decided to use the army instead.

Pageants can already open up the female psyche to some fresh hell, without the addition of cow pats to the mix.

Beauty pageants have a long history of doing the opposite of empowering women, sometimes to the extent of being misogynistic in their cruel and narrow idea of beauty. They have usually just been another excuse to present a parade of women for the male gaze, judging them on a bunch of questionable attributes.



We’ve all seen Beyoncé’s Beauty Hurts. Pageants can already open up the female psyche to some fresh hell without the addition of cow pats to the mix.

To be fair, some pageant organisers have tried to sugar the pill by offering university scholarships. Miss America is crowned with a whole host of worldwide opportunities and over $50, 000 in scholarships. Yes, Miss America did have to endure the indignity of the swimsuit section, and may have had to mention world peace more than once, but at the end of it all she’ll be leaving college debt-free, which is nothing to scoff at these days. The organisers really know how to sweeten that pill.

In Uganda we have not learnt to be that mercenary yet. The Miss Uganda organisers sought to focus the pageant this year on things that make a “good woman”, which included housekeeping and digging. I personally cannot dig worth a damn, nor sow seeds, so with my masters degree and sometimes adorable smile I probably wouldn’t have stood a fighting chance. But sour grapes aside, the Ugandan pageant has managed to add a fresh circle of hell to the inferno that is judging women on their physical appearance. Now we get to judge them on how well their bodies can scoop chicken poo.

Miss Uganda contestants pose with a tractor, at the Bukalasa Agricultural College. Photograph: Rebecca Vassie/AP

Why not combine that with judging a woman on her potential of becoming the next nuclear physicist or literary mind? Or, how about adding a category that assesses the contestants’ ideas for making Africa the agricultural powerhouse it could be? All this, of course, alongside their ability to procure milk from a cow’s udder.

But, no, once again we are being told to be beautiful, to be domesticated, anything but unusual. I applaud the Ugandan army and pageant organisers for trying to think outside the box, but making women herd goats does nothing for female empowerment. The women’s rights movement has not been steadily inching towards a woman’s right to be knee-deep in manure.