A woman who is in the running to represent Great Britain at the Miss Universe beauty pageant has spoken of the need to create safe spaces for women following her two-year harassment ordeal. Rajnie Kaur Uppal, 25, who is a finalist in the national competition, is raising awareness of her story in a bid to empower women.
When Rajnie moved away from her family home in Northwich, Cheshire, for university, she became a victim of harassment from the partner of someone she knew. She became confined to her bedroom, afraid to leave, as she was bombarded with verbal abuse and nuisance texts.
Rajnie says she was forced to live in three different homes in the space of six months in a bid to escape, and was left feeling isolated and humiliated. “When I was experiencing my harassment I really felt like I was in need of an outlet,” Rajnie told the Manchester Evening News. “When you go through something like that, it can feel like you don’t have a voice, and so I started writing poetry in my room and it really was my saving grace.
“It reminded me of how powerful my voice was.” Rajnie shared her first poem about gender stereotypes on Instagram, where she discovered a community of women who could relate to her words.
“It was a massive turning point for me,” Rajnie, who works for the public sector in diversity and inclusion, continued. “I felt part of something, it’s important to have a group of strong women around you, and actually it is something that is needed.
“My whole advocacy now is about creating safe spaces for other women where they don’t feel alone. Women experience so much sexism, I am yet to meet a woman who hasn’t at some point in their life.
“We should be sharing our stories, it’s about saying what we’re experiencing is not normal and not okay. And as a collective, we’re going to feel empowered to say so.”
She now spends her free time performing as a spoken word poet and has held workshops providing poetry and journalling sessions for domestic abuse charity, the Asian Women’s Resource Centre. In aid of A-Sisterhood, an organisation she is fundraising for throughout her pageant journey, she hosts ‘Poetry and Prosecco' evenings for groups of women looking to network and share their stories through poetry.
While most women involved in pageants take part from a young age, it will be the first competition for Rajnie, who is proud to be representing women of colour as a Punjabi Sikh woman. The finals are taking place in South Wales in July, and the Miss Universe hopeful has been impressed with the representation in this year's cohort of contestants.
"There are a lot of brown and black women who are finalists and it’s so important to see that representation," Rajnie explained. "It shows how far we've come, not just with pageants but with Eurocentric beauty standards.
"Women who look like me weren’t on TV or in modelling campaigns... I’m really proud to be able to stand up there as a finalist and to show girls of colour looking to apply that they can see women like me and know that they are beautiful."
If she were to claim the title, Rajnie hopes to continue her work in promoting female empowerment, and to keep up her poetry events but on a bigger scale. "Hopefully my story shows there is light at the end of the tunnel, it shows we [women] are capable of anything we put our minds to," Rajnie added.
"We haven’t had an Indian woman win Miss Universe Great Britain yet so I would be honoured to be the first."
You can find Rajnie's poetry on her Instagram page @rajniewrites. To find out how you can vote for Rajnie to be your next Miss Universe Great Britain, visit here.
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