Are beauty contests harmful?

Beauty contests promote an ideal of female beauty to which only a minority of women can realistically aspire, but which adds to the pressure on all women to conform to it. This can be harmful to women by encouraging dieting, eating disorders and cosmetic surgery, or simply by making them feel inadequate and ugly?
The beauty of a fit, healthy, well-proportioned human form is something from which we can all take pleasure, and beauty contests, along with other forms of art, are vehicles which enable us to do so but People enjoy beauty contests. Many women enjoy entering them. Many people enjoy watching them. Nobody is forced to do either.

What do you think?

Medias are harmful. All the people think that beauty is what they see on TV, slim girls with awesome bodies and so on. Girls who aren't like them are considered ugly and they think none cares about them (the first people that doesn't care about them is themselves). Medias aren't always showing healthy ways to get beautiful, so cases of eating disorders are increasing evermore.

Yeah I think Doing Anything Beyond the limit Whether it may be Beauty contest or any other related is always Dangerous and i think those cosmetics items include some harmful items in it so better to avoid that

i completely agree to your point,these beauty contest impose danger on the health of the participants.those figures in the contest,i never find them attractive.a girl who has nothing but bones in her body is considered as top model and a show stopper?where is the beauty there?just the look at the bone is considered as beauty?i don't agree to this.i think they should rename these contests as bony contests.

Beuty contests often destroy our society. Girls think that they are perfect (as they seem on the catwalk) but in realitty they have problems with drugs, depression and all that. "Normal" girls will think that they are ugly, and fat, and that's why there are so many cases of girls with depression.

You have a point because most of the beauty contest are seen on TV and witnessed by teenagers and they were influenced by it. I am not against beauty contest but it must have a caused and goals, like to raise a fund for the development of the society. I would prefer sports than beauty contest because it is more helpful for the youth to abstain from vices like drugs, smoking, drinking and it will help to develop their social skills and good for their health.