Sunday, February 16, 2025

Federal lawmakers move to outlaw beauty contests

The congressional Gender Equality Commission is moving to ban beauty pageants, seeing them as a form of “symbolic violence” against women.

If the recommended measure becomes law, government entities at all levels, from municipal to federal, would be prohibited from sponsoring such events, and privately sponsored pageants could be canceled.

On Friday morning, participating legislators in the lower house of Congress approved a draft decree to modify and add various provisions to the general law on Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence.

The commission defines symbolic violence as “the expression, emission or diffusion by any means, whether in the public or private sphere of messages, patterns, stereotypes, signs, iconic values ​​or ideas that transmit, reproduce, or justify the subordination, inequality, discrimination or violence against women.”

The draft decree outlines its objection to beauty pageants by decrying “the holding of contests, elections or any other form of competition in which the beauty or physical appearance of women, girls or adolescents is evaluated in full or in part based on sexist stereotypes.”

“We consider that beauty pageants are an instrument that exposes women through sociocultural patterns and under gender stereotypes and enhances the concept that a woman’s body is an object,” commission president María Wendy Briceño Zuloaga explained. “They limit the personal development of the participants.”

Beauty contests are an integral part of many festivals in Mexico, such as Carnival.

Source: El Sol de México (sp), La Jornada (sp), Sin Embargo (sp)

An aerial view of the hotel Excellence Coral Playa Mujeres

Massive new Playa Mujeres resort expected to create 3,000 jobs

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The US $220-million, all-inclusive resort features 470 rooms, seven pools and a spa.
A cockroach like those you can name after your ex at the Nuevo Laredo Zoo

This Valentine’s Day, feed your cockroach ex to the animals at the Nuevo Laredo Zoo

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The Nuevo Laredo Zoo is offering a creative way to get back at your least-favorite ex.
Soldiers guard a burned out car (narco blockade) in rural Sinaloa

New York Times: US will designate 6 Mexican cartels as terrorist groups

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Among the most powerful of the Mexican cartels expected to receive the designation are the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.