The Miss World pageant will not have a swimsuit round from the next year's competition onwards, as per the announcement made by the pageant chairwoman Julia Morley stressing 'Beauty with a Purpose' aspect of the pageant. As per the organizers, Miss World is not just a beauty queen, she should be more like an ambassador; a spokesperson who can to help a community.
In an interview with Elle, Mrs Morley explained "I don't need to see women just walking up and down in bikinis. It doesn't do anything for the woman. And it doesn't do anything for any of us." She added "I don't care if someone has a bottom two inches bigger than someone else's. We are really not looking at her bottom. We are really listening to her speak."
Mrs Morley also revealed that she is hoping to set her competition apart from other pageants by emphasizing brains and personality over physical beauty.
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Miss World, which was founded in 1951 by Mrs Morley's late husband Eric, in fact started as a contest dedicated exclusively to swimwear and was called the Festival Bikini Contest. In 1951, when Kiki Hakansson won Miss World, she was crowned on stage in a bikini. Ever since then swimsuit round has been an integral and important part of Miss World pageant, and has been very popular with the audience too, who do love seeing beautiful women showing off their enviable figures in tiny two-pieces.
In recent years, the Miss World pageant has elected not to broadcast the swimsuit or bikini portion of the show, and the girls were being judged privately in front of a small panel as part of Beach Fashion round. But as of 2015, the organizers have decided to do away with the swimsuit round altogether. Besides beach fashion round, Miss World also features a fashion round, a talent round and a sports round and the most important “Beauty with a Purpose" round where contestants do charity work.
Hats off to Julia for taking such a revolutionary initiative by removing the swimsuit contest, which otherwise is the most popular segment of any beauty pageant.
Will the national contests responsible for selecting their country's representative for Miss World follow and also ban swimsuit contests from their national pageants?
