The Exploitative Nature of Beauty Pageants - Essay Example

Reflective Essay about Persuasive SpeechI was quite confident when going to deliver a speech on the exploitative nature of beauty pageants. I had chosen this subject because there are companies in my community that have begun to sponsor beauty pageants for very young girls. I researched on this subject and acquired statistics demonstrating the malevolent influence of beauty pageants on young vulnerable girls as well as mature women. I was also able to locate and speak with a number of former beauty queens who were quite frank in giving the details of how their lives had been affected by their participation in the beauty pageants.

My friends were somewhat skeptical about my choice of topic because they are all models. Moreover, all the information I got about what life really is like for a beauty queen convinced me that the benefits of the title ‘beauty queen’ are far outweighed by the drawbacks caused by it. My aim was to inform my audience, which consisted of young women and men in their twenties and thirties about the many emerging beauty queen competitions in the area and convince them that these pageants were destructive and would ruin the self esteem of any woman or girl that agreed to participate in them.

I had done a lot of research and documented my discussions with former beauty queens who gave me permission to use their stories. I was able to use such information in my speech with astounding success. I also mentioned the dates on which I had conducted the interviews so as to demonstrate how recent the issue is. Usually, I am quite nervous before delivering a speech. However, this time I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was excited and could not wait to deliver my speech; particularly when I saw the gathering audience.

Corporate workers and a large group of models sat at the front while the youth occupied large spaces in the back. My model friends and I had sat up arguing about the reasons why beauty contents are destructive, and I was still charged from that experience. I launched into my speech with gusto, though I tried to avoid speaking too fast in order to cover all the points in my speech. I asked a few models I recognized in the audience about what they did o a daily basis to maintain their low weight.

This sparked immediate discussions among the audience members; with some shouting answers and others murmuring about anorexia. From the stance adopted by nearly all the members of the audience, I could tell that my subject was very interesting. Even before I had finished my speech, I could hear murmurs of assent as well as dissent. Once my speech was finished, different people peppered me with questions while others asked for clarifications on particular points. I quite enjoyed delivering my speech to this audience.

The interest displayed in my choice of subject encouraged me and made me less nervous about delivering the rest of the speech. In preparing my speech, I realized that there are different stages to speech writing. I wrote my original speech in one sitting because it was a subject of immense interest to me. Moreover, as I engaged in arguments with my friends on this subject, I restructured it so as to make a clearer argument. I tried to argue on the basis of issues such as emotional and physical health, which are acceptable to all members of the audience.

I also tried to convince the male members of the audience that changing any erroneous perceptions of female beauty would contribute towards the eradication of common disorders such as anorexia among women and girls.