Light and Shade: Sketches from an Uncommon Life

16. Beauty Pageant in South Dakota

16 “Beauty is altogether in the eye of the beholder." Margaret Hungerford (1855-1897), Molly Brown “Beauty is only skin deep." Attributed to Thomas Overbury (1581-1613) The first phrase has become a clich丘， but in the case of a beauty contest it can surely be regarded as apt. The second, a1so a common clich話 is not as apt since beauty contests ，的 1 have found, seem to seek beauty beyond skin depth. Acting as one of the judges at a beauty pageant was undoubted1y among my more unusual experiences, especially since at no time in the past had 1 shown any particular interest in beauty pageants or beauty contests of any sort. The events 1 am about to relate took place in the summer of 1963 in South Dakota, USA, and how 1 came to be in this somewhat less noticeable part of the United States deserves a page or two. Hong Kong University Health Service In 1956, in Hong Kong, 1 left genera1 medica1 practice to take up the post of university hea1th officer at the University of Hong Kong. My job was to organize a comprehensive full-time medica1 service for students, staff and the staff's dependants. In this, the University was falling in step with most of the world's tertiary educationa1 institutions, which, in the post-Second World War era, had established student hea1th services. A departure, by Hong Kong University, from the usual model was the addition of staff and dependants to the panel - a sensible measure in view of the absence in Hong Kong of any nationa1 medica1 insurance. The University Hea1th Service provided straightforward general practice facilities for staff and families, but for students it entai1ed much more. The Service was concemed with the students' physica1, mental and emotional wellbeing, and consequently provided help 194 Part 3 and advice in health education, sports medicine, preventive medicine, and simple counselling. It was in simple counselling that 1 felt the lack of professional help. The post-war university environment was much more stressful and competitive than the pre-war one. Instead of the aft1uent student body of prewar days, the university now catered for poorer students, many studying on scholarships or bursaries. The demand for university places far exceeded their supply. The academic demands and the pressure on students to succeed were enormous. 1 soon became convinced that the Service needed trained professional counsellors for students who were increasingly weighed down with financial, family and other problems such as poor study skills. Counselling services were already accepted in many universities abroad, especially in America and Australia, where returning servicemen and women entering universities, some traumatized by their war experience, required counselling. When 1 proposed a counselling service for university students, 1 received no support at all from the University's academics or administrators. They clung steadfastly to the old notion, strongly entrenched in British red-brick universities, that the students' best counsellors were tutors or hall wardens. 1 was amazed at how British academics accepted psychology as a subject, but were suspicious of its practical application, as in clinical counselling. However, 1 persisted. Finally, in 1963, after the Asia Foundation, an American educational institution working in Asia, offered to send me and pay for my attachment to a counselling service in the USA, the University agreed to give me three months' paid leave to take up the Asia Foundation's 0叮er and to report my findings to the University on my return. University of Minnesota Counselling Service 1 apologize to my readers for being slow in getting to the main subject of this essay, the Beauty Pageant, but 1 still have a good deal of interesting material to impart. The Asia Foundation had arranged for me to be attached to the Counselling Bureau (“bureau" - an ugly term, 1 thought later; a “centre" would have been more appropriate) of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, widely regarded in the field as the “Mecca of Counselling'\I was to be guided and advised by its head, Professor Ralph Berd峙， and there 1 proceeded in May 1963. The Bureau was housed in a large old-fashioned, three-storey red-brick building and served by a large staff of professional and clerical personneL The ground t10 0r was allotted to clinical counselling, where students were seen by qualified and trainee clinical counsellors, either by referral or by open entry. Beauty Pageant in South Dakotα195 The...