Uganda state minister for tourism Godfrey Kiwanda said that only extra curvy women should contest for the Miss Uganda Beauty Pageant, for the sake of using them to promote tourism in the country.
“We have naturally endowed, nice-looking women who are amazing to look at,” Kiwanda said. “Why don’t we use these people as a strategy to promote our tourism industry?”
The pageant is part of the ministry’s initiative that aims to highlight Uganda’s tourist attractions.
According to a mission statement on its website,”the event is organized to recognize and acknowledge the big, bold and beautiful plus-size Ugandan ladies.”
Curvy women have now been added to a list of tourist attractions which also includes national parks, wildlife and spectacular waterfalls.
Unsurprisingly, the suggestion that women be used to attract foreign tourists has received widespread condemnation on social media, in the local press and from a fellow minister in Uganda’s cabinet.
Minister of Ethics and Integrity Rev. Fr. Simon Lokodo has called on the Tourism Ministry to showcase the wide array of tourist attractions in Uganda instead of “scandalizing” the nation.
“I totally condemn that pageant and I would want it stopped,” Lokodo said in an interview with Record TV Uganda.
“It is not fair to women, and girls growing up because it un-dignifies them.”
Since then, an online petition has been created by Primrose Murungi, a Ugandan woman, who says she feels personally attacked by the minister’s comments and the pageant.
Murungi described it as “degrading” and “objectifying” in a country where women are grabbed by men while walking on the streets, and now they have legalized it by making them tourist attractions.”