Uganda's new tourism campaign blatantly objectifies women

On February 6, Ugandan Tourism Minister John Kiwanda unveiled the country’s new tourism campaign at a press conference. The campaign featured neither the country’s national parks nor its vibrant culture, but rather curvy women. Kiwanda plans to feature “curvy and sexy women” as a primary Ugandan attraction in the official literature for the nation’s tourism. The plan also includes the launch of a beauty pageant called “Miss Curvy Uganda,” the winner of which will be used in an advertising campaign.

"Uganda is endowed with beautiful women,” Kiwanda told AFP news agency about his reasoning for the campaign, adding that because “their beauty is unique and diverse,” the campaign makes “this beauty a product to be marketed along with what we already have as a country ranging from nature, the language, and food to make it a tourist attraction."

This tourism “strategy” is blatantly misogynistic. It’s also sadly unsurprising, given Uganda’s history of objectifying and policing women under the guise of morality and limiting the agency they have over their own bodies. For example, in 2014, the Ugandan government passed the Anti-Pornography Act, which, as the name suggests, bans the broadcast, procurement, sale, and distribution of any form of pornography. Pornography in this act, however, is defined as any kind of “indecent show” or“representation of sexual parts of a person for primarily sexual excitement.” When it was passed, the minister for ethics and integrity at the time, Simon Lokodo, announced that the act also prohibited certain forms of women’s dress, such as miniskirts. The law led to an increased number of incidents where mobs of men harassed, assaulted, and even undressed women for wearing miniskirts in public spaces.

It is important to recognize that the state-sanctioned objectification of Ugandan women is an indirect sanction for tourists to objectify them as well. Feminist scholars have long argued that objectification is dehumanizing and as such results in the women and girls who are objectified being seen as less deserving of moral concern and at heightened risk of experiencing aggression. As Barbara L. Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts write in their article on Objectification Theory, “Once sexually objectified, the worth of a woman’s body or body part is directly equated to its physical appearance or potential sexual function and is treated like it exists solely for others to use or consume.” Objectification also harms the mental health of women and girls caught in its crosshairs, as they internalize external views and perspectives and constantly monitor how their bodies look based on those expectations. This leads to increased feelings of shame, anxiety, and disgust toward their bodies, which puts them at risk for mental health issues such as depression and eating disorders.

Sadly, many Ugandans actually support this strategy and have defended it by saying that slender women have been used to promote brands since the beginning of time, so using curvy women is essentially appreciating beauty in diverse forms. Other Ugandans, however, are offended by and have spoken out against the strategy. Rita Aciro, executive director of the Uganda Women’s Network, called for the minister’s resignation over dehumanizing and degrading Ugandan women. Primrose Murungi, a Ugandan activist and entrepreneur, started an online petition demanding the cancellation of the contest, stating that the tourism strategy is the Ugandan government’s way of legalizing the sexual harassment that Ugandan women already face. The petition has since garnered over 2,900 signatures out of the targeted 5,000.

Ideally, Ugandans can follow Aciro and Murungi’s footsteps and use this incident as an opportunity to learn about the dangers of objectification and push back on continued efforts to enforce it.