A town in Argentina banned beauty pageants for being harmful to women making it the first town in the country to do so, The Independent reported.

The city of Chivilcoy in the province of Bueno Aires says beauty competitions can encourage contestants to become bulimic among other mental health illnesses because they focus on physical beauty.

The Argentina Independent reported that the Chivilcoy City council says pageants are sexist. They said the contests "reinforce the idea that women must be valued and rewarded exclusively by their physical appearance, based on stereotypes."

The council added that pageants are "a discriminatory and sexist practice", and "acts of symbolic and institutional violence against women and children."

The Gender Secretariat and the Assembly for Children's Rights of the local branch of the Argentine Workers' Union brought forward the idea of banning beauty pageants. Several NGOS and the mayor of the city supported the legislation.

"It's a very important achievement," a member of the local CTA branch Claudia Marengo said.

"It has an enormous symbolic value, since the municipal state made the decision, within the framework of this bill, to stop subjecting the women of Chivilcoy to the exhibition, objectification, and selection that beauty pageants imply."

Instead of pageants, there will be an event recognizing "people of between 15 and 30 years [old] who, in an individual or collective way, have stood out in volunteering activities aimed at improving the quality of life in neighborhoods within the city or the district."

Nadia Cerri, the director of Miss World Argentina thinks that pageants should be regulated but an all-out ban on them is going too far, Fox News Latino reported.

She acknowledged that some pageants had judges who were all men "who only value a catwalk in a bikini."

The city of Chivilcoy is the first town in Latin America to ban beauty pageants and more could follow.

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