Photo Credit: Reuters
The context in which this image appears is striking. With papparazzi hovering to make that "perfect" shot, 20-year-old Metok Lhanzey confidently struts before them during the "swimwear round" of the Miss Tibet beauty contest recently.
Notice the number of males surrounding the contestant, the angles in which some of them are making images, and the majority of the shooters looking down into the backs of their cameras to review the pictures they have just made.
Held in India and open to the public for the first time, the contest has drawn a great deal of attention around the world not because of it objectifies and stereotypes woman, but because of its underlying political message. Lhanzey, who has spent time in Chinese prisons and first fled Tibet in 1999, believes that the beauty pagent is a way to bring attention to the struggles in her homeland.
According to a Reuters report, Lhanzey said:
"Culture is not like stagnant water that remains in a pool," Lhazey said. "It is like a flowing river, it keeps on evolving, and Tibetan women should go along with this."
In one sense, the Miss Tibet pageant is embellmatic of the fact that there are seemlingly no limits to how far Western cultural values -- with its orientation on materialism and individualism -- can reach.