To tell the truth, the questions like this are somewhat baffling. The term “exploitive” here presupposes that women who participate in them are exploited because they are graded by the looks of their bodies without taking into account what good persons they are. The winners are exploited because they are given the sense of false superiority. The losers are exploited because they feel inferior.
Are singing contests exploitive for the same reasons? We take into account only the person’s ability to sing without noticing how nice he or she may be in all the other respects. And all who lose also feel inferior to the winner without being guilty of that. The same goes for IQ testing, athletic competitions and any competitions in general. There is no competition that takes the entire person into consideration and there are no competitions where there are no winners and no losers – they are supposed to include competition, no matter how trite it may sound. What is the fundamental difference between all of them and beauty pageants?
They are told to the state of object. I have a very strong suspicion that the majority of their opponents are women that cannot be very proud of their outlook and try to prevent the ones who can from doing it, for it is unclear why they are so particular of opposing them? If you don’t like beauty pageants, don’t participate in them. I am no lover of such events myself; to put it more exactly, I don’t care about them at all. Yet, it is revolting to think that people who have nothing to do with it think they have right to prevent the ones who are willing to participate and organize them from actually doing it.