Miss Universe: The Litmus Test

Only about six million live viewers for the finals of the Miss Universe pageant in Las Vegas. I mentioned the location to point out that it was really convenient for North and South American viewers to catch this and it seemed they weren't very keen.

I used to look out for our own Miss Singapore among them but have lost interest and stopped that for I can't remember how long.

After a while we all gave up and view this as mostly a flesh parade with a PLUS or plus. It eventually dawned on us that it was just a small plus. Well Steve Harvey inadvertently offered the world audience the litmus test of what these most beautiful women are made of. Not much and what you see will not last very long unless they put in herculean effort to keep looking good. Even so it is fading glory and every year there are new beauties. So this is just a passport to wealth.

My friend's daughter was Miss Indiana before and today she doesn't want to be reminded of her achievement. Instead she prefers to be known as a successful pharmacist. Her mother told me the experience was eye opening especially the competitiveness, the effort and cheating that went into trying to win. In the end the more attractive girls are the ones who didn't win because they went to make friends as their top priority. Like our Lisa Marie White.

 Possibly many of these former beauty queens remain superficial all their lives. Imelda Marcos was a beauty queen and she was much worse than superficial.

Look Miss Philippines and Universe 1969 and 1973, that was so long ago I was too young to understand, must be senior citizens now, check out their bad attitude.

The newly crowned Miss Universe should have shared the moment with Miss Columbia to save her the embarrassment. That would have made her truly special but of course I am asking the impossible. All these girls are so focused on themselves. Any charity is done to make themselves look good. But for how long? Meanwhile the world has become wiser and look elsewhere. In my lifetime I will see the end of these silly beauty contests. They should stop the ones for babies and animals too. Just compete with growing the best vegetables.

Update: Jan 1 7:00pm

This yahoo story makes it easy for me to say that there are jobs and roles we take on that come with losing our identities. A beauty queen represents her country but she doesn't have the experience and savvy of an ambassador. Unless she is carefully choreographed things are likely to go wrong given their youth and inexperienced.

If what had happened was bad, it could have been much worse and there was only one way to make it better bearing in mind that countries must not lose face.