The current controversy about Miss Vida Samadzai, the Afghan contestant in the Miss Earth contest, has got me wondering. Is that all we’ve got to show for rousting out the Taliban and plunging a country into at least partial anarchy? Granted, she looks great in that red bikini (although she could use a sandwich), but there should be a little more to all this than just the photogenic flesh of one of the most misunderstood genomes in the world today.

According to the various press reports I’ve read, they’re having a hard time finding ANYONE in Afghanistan who approves of this. The Supreme Court of Afghanistan (I’m picturing three old guys in a cave) have thrown some legal and religious statutes at her. Local women on the street won’t talk to reporters about it (stone a few of them for talking to male strangers and the shyness lingers on for a long time) and even the few women they did find who’d chat about it were angry. Can you blame them? In that country women are fighting both figuratively and in some cases physically to prove to men that they should be allowed to be educated and relaxed about some of the harsher tenets of Shariah law. “Just because we adopt some of the elements of Western Society doesn’t mean we’re all going to become the next whores of Babylon,” they cry. And then to help out her sisters back in the homeland, what does college student Miss Samadzai do? She dons a red bikini and struts her stuff down the catwalk at the Miss Earth pageant. Nice.