EDITORIAL - No closure

Perish the thought, if you think the controversy surrounding the Miss Cebu contest will simmer down now that the panel created to investigate the wrong announcement of a winner in the Texters Choice Award has made a few determinations and corrections.

For one, the damage has been done, both to individuals and to institutions, and no amount of rectification or public apology can ever contain and gloss over whatever hurt the fumble, intended or not, may have caused.

There will be no closure unless we scrap beauty pageants altogether. And that is just impossible. Whenever there is beauty, there will always be those willing to go to great lengths to flaunt it.

And where there is that willingness to flaunt beauty, who else follows through the door but those eager to exploit it. No one will admit it, but that is what it boils down to, really. As to other, more beautiful women off the ramp, theirs is the crowning glory of peaceful sleep.

When a woman enters a beauty contest, she does so with a burning desire to win, fired by the smoldering conviction that she is more beautiful than the rest. A woman joining a beauty contest totally unbelieving in her winning beauty must be a little outside the weather.

But there is only one eventual winner, although there are a lot of consolation prizes. And these do not really console, for no one and nothing can ever console a woman spurned. Some carry the hurt well, but no one leaves emotionally unscathed. Others are simply sore losers.

There will be no closure because even after people shall have ceased being titillated by the scandal, the unforgiveable hurt will continue to fester, and an audience can always be found for the anger that lingers, and the back-stabbing that springs from it.

There will be no closure because, again, where there is beauty, there will always be those willing to go to great lengths to flaunt it. And those who follow through the door to exploit it can always be trusted to close the door behind them to prevent any escape.

Thus, if a contest gets too tainted for comfort, they can always change its name. And they can always look for new organizers. New beauties, too, can be found, plus of course a few stragglers from previous ones, always hopeful, always convinced in a next time around.