Every pageant follows its rules religiously year after year. But, the past one year has seen historic changes in Beauty pageants, as a competition. From contestants of Miss Peru refraining from telling their stats, and revealing figures of crimes against women in their country, to a contestant with Down’s syndrome competing in a USA based pageant, 2017 was a year of a new found empowerment in pageantry. 

It comes as a shock, however, that a UK based pageant, Galaxy Pageants UK, had laid down a condition that wasn’t just anti-human rights, but, also illegal in the country.

In order to compete in the Manchester-based pageant, aspiring beauty queens were told that they could not compete even if they had legal recognition of their assigned gender.

This blatantly disrespectful request attracted quite a lot of backlash for the organizers, ranging from people calling it illegal, to demanding explanations for the irresponsible actions of the organization.

Under the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, UK, any Trans woman who holds a Gender Recognition Certificate – whereby she becomes a fully legal female and her original birth certificate is amended to female – is not legally obliged to divulge that she was assigned legally male at birth.

Galaxy Pageants UK, which was established in 2008, produces the Mrs. Galaxy, Ms. Galaxy, Miss Galaxy, Miss Teen Galaxy & Junior Miss Galaxy competitions in the United Kingdom.

The competitions are linked to the Galaxy International Pageant, with the winners of the UK competitions flown out to the international ceremony in Orlando, Florida, to compete.

The brand must have realized the slip on their part, as they soon changed the condition on their site.

The director of Galaxy Pageants UK Director, Holly Pirrie, also gave a statement to a section of the media, to rectify the mistake. She said,  “Our terms and conditions for the UK Galaxy Pageant states that the legal gender of the contestant must be female and so, we have no further comment with regards to this matter.”