A world of their own
By Sheryl-Lee Kerr
IF you blinked last week, you missed it. Which says rather a lot in
itself. The Miss World contest crowned its 50th winner, Miss India, in
London’s Millennium Dome. Curiously, its host was TV’s trailer-park-trash
pin-up boy Jerry Springer. Ri-ight.
Gone are the days when a Miss World contestant was noted only for
her ability to fill out a swimsuit, teeter on heels higher than a 747 and
smile sweetly.
These days - with plummeting TV ratings in Western countries -
organisers say they have “modernised” the pageant.
Yep, nowadays Miss World entrants must be able to fill out a
swimsuit, teeter on heels, name Israel’s Cabinet and explain how to attain
world peace while simultaneously smiling sweetly.
Whoeee. I get exhausted just thinking about it.
Seriously, organisers actually said this year’s contest was about
“talent, poise, personality and general knowledge”. So looking fab-o in a
teeny swimsuit has nothing whatsoever to do with it. (That’s just an eerie
coincidence.)
I do love the pageant motto: “Beauty with a purpose”. Hmm. So if
beauty is skin-deep, then their motto really reads: “Being skin-deep, with
a purpose”. Hey, I like it.
To be fair to these entrants, a wire story quotes organisers as
saying: “Today’s high-powered contestants ... seem to have so many
qualifications that it won’t be long before Miss World is a Dr World.”
For example, Miss Bolivia wants to set up an organ donor system in
her country. I’d love to see her talent segment - “I now will demonstrate
organ transplant. Lie back, no move ...”
And Sviatlana Kruk, of Belarus, hopes “to discover and prove a new mathematical rule”. Oh, great. Like there aren’t enough old ones to remember?
My question is: if you are a doctor busily saving the Third World
from all the diseases ending in ‘-aria’ and running a global humanitarian
organisation or three, where do you get time to enter a beauty contest?
Or: if you are so intellectually evolved that you can solve the mystery of world peace in fewer than 25 words, why enter beauty contests?
But the best question of them all: why Jerry Springer?
© Sheryl-Lee Kerr & The Advertiser, 5 DEC 2000.