I was doing some research for a project I was doing on land mine awareness and I came across this great contest in Angola called Miss Landmine. It is held every year to help bring light to those women who have suffered lost limbs or injury due to land mines, and remove some of the stigma that exists for many of the sufferers. This is the Manifesto for the organization responsible for the event:

THE MISS LANDMINE MANIFESTO
(in no particular order)

* Female pride and empowerment.

* Disabled pride and empowerment.

* Global and local landmine awareness and information.

* Challenge inferiority and/or guilt complexes that hinder creativity-
historical, cultural, social, personal, African, European.

* Question established concepts of physical perfection.

* Challenge old and ingrown concepts of cultural cooperation.

* Celebrate true beauty.

* Replace the passive term 'Victim' with the active term 'Survivor'

And have a good time for all involved while doing so!

These are a couple of the ads created to showcase the event for media:





Really is an interesting notion, and one that we fail, here in the Western world, to play with. We hide our 'abnormalities' behind closed doors, or at least we certainly don't give them a contest or pageant. Why don't we? Clearly these women disprove our notions of beauty and flip around our notions of what is normal. This is truly a world changing idea. How can anything be the same?