Miss World Pageant, 50 Uears Old This Gear, Was Once an Event of Global Importance, but Scandals and Changing Attitudes Made It an Irrelevance
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FLASH BACK er€8$S WffiKLm l rtr TEARS AND TIARAS The Miss World pageant, 50 Uears old this gear, was once an event of global importance, but scandals and changing attitudes made it an irrelevance. Philip Watson explores the chequered historg of this most British gift to the world lN 1958, MISS WORLD was a major cultural Bum rush the show national costumes and evening gowns, million, but just two years later it event. Much like royal weddings and The swimsuit round of with sequinned parrots on their heads sustained a blow from which it would Miss World in World Cup finals, it brought the country 1973 and exotic fruits on their breasts. Hardest never quite recover. Women's to a standstill. Photographs ofthe beauties of all, they had to endure Michael Aspel's Liberationists stormed the stage that were splashed across the papers and imaginative line in questioning ("And just night, hurling stink bombs and tomatoes. sweepstakes were organised in every what did you eat for breakfastl") and They carried placards that read "Pageants office and club. And while streets lay embarrassing penchant for flirtation ("lt Hurt All Women" and, more enigmatical ly, empty and pubs closed for the night, half says here you play piano - do you know "Jealousy Wi ll GetYou Nowhere". the people in Britain gathered around "l'm in the Mood for Love"?). Compere Bob Hope was seen scrambling televisions to picl< their favourites and People loved Miss World's comfortable to the wings with a dazed and disbelieving argue over who was going ro win. formula: its tears and tiaras, its vital look on his face. Perhaps his pre-PC It was the hominoid version of the statistics ("Miss South Africa is 19, 5ft 9in crack that"lt's been quite a cattle market Grand National, with champion and 36-24-36") and its varnished nail- and I've been out there checl<ing calves" thoroughbreds required to hurdle fences biting suspense, with the copiously hadn't helped matters. But from that both physical and mental. They had to Brylcreemed Eric Morley announcing: moment on, the days of MissWorld - z teeter on the staircased stage of the "As is customary, I shall announce the and with it Benny Hill, Playbcy bunnies Royal Albert Hall in colourful swimwear results in reverse order." and Corry On films - were numbered. and white stilettos. They had to maintain At its height in 1968, MissWorld Britain had discovered sexual politics and glazed expressions while parading in wowed a television audience of 27.8 things could never be the same again. www.esquire.co.uk @ 65 tu$a$s wffi$ryt ffi t q, E'trd MISS WffiR[-ffi... Five queens cursed fl*, bg the crown i.f v 1s70 below, was kidnapped r MISS GRENADA and held to ransom. In the gear after In later gears, she 3 win n ing the title, became ambassador Jennifer Hosten, to Canada. J **t 1r ;8 l1," v 1380 it emerged that the 18- MISS GERMANY gear-old had appeared ,fi Gabriella Brum, below, in porn films and was reigned forjust 17 living with their hours, resigning when 52-gear-old producer V, was vilified as sexist and demeaning in the Seventies, the BBC allowed the baton to pass to Thames Television in 1979. During the Eighties, audience figures began to fall. ln 1984 BBC Television Controller Michael Grade dealt Miss World a serious blow when he called it "lt's been quite a cattle market and l've been out "an anachronism in this age of equality and verging on the offensive". there checking calves," cracked compere Bob Hope Even though audience figures for the 1987 show were still a respectable 12.5 It started innocently enough. Created decided to make the pageant annual. 1gT4 MISS UK million, Thames announced it was 50 years ago by then PR manager Morley Shying away from the adverse publicity Helen Morgan, oborue, dropping its network broadcasts in 1988. as a bikini beauty contest to jazz up the sparlced by the bikini parades, he was forced to resign Disenfranchised in the UK, MissWorld Festival of Britain, the event proved a huge promptly banned the use of the four dags after began to look abroad for support. From and instant success. "lt was something of two-piece in the 1952 event. The ban winningthe contest 1992to 1995, the eventwas staged in Sun a shocl<er," Morley explained later. stayed in force for several years. when it was revealed City, South Africa; in 1996 it was taken to "There weren't any Page Three girls bacl< The BBC began broadcasting Miss that she was an Bangalore in lndia, where the pageant met then and it was very risqu6." World in 1959 and l2 million viewers unmarried mother a storm of protest. One man, allegedly The event was planned as a one-off, tuned in. ln the Sixties, it regularly chanting anti-Miss World slogans, burned and it was only after a US group launched attracted audiences in excess of20 himself to death. More than 1,500 people a "Miss Universe" competition the million; comperes included TerryWogan were arrested outside the MissWorld following year that the patriotic Morley and Esther Rantzen. When the pageant stadium on the night of the final. 66 {3 www.esquire.co.uk Brought home again, last year Miss World was presented - rather fittingly, it seemed - in the surroundings of the botched and beleaguered Millennium Dome, with Jerry Springer acting as its tongue-in-cheek host. Sky had picked up the broadcasting crumbs first, and Channel 5 had begun to televise the show in 1997. lt tried to give Miss World an ironic, postmodern, new-laddish spin, attempting to ape the way that Terry Wogan simultaneously both mocks and celebrates the Eurovision Song Contest. It failed. This year, as the pageant returns to Sun City on l6 November, even Channel 5 has withdrawn. From my experience of the Miss World circus it is not hard to see why. I attended MissWorld 1997 in the Seychelles, having fallen for an invitation that promised "the world's most beautiful women in the world's most beautiful islands". a 1973 her brieftenure she'd Sure, I swam with a bevy of Miss MISS AMERICA announced that she World beauries in one of their rare, Marjorie Wallace was wanted to "make love unguarded moments of relaxation sacked 104 dags into to as mang men before a final evening rehearsal. At the her tenure as Miss as possible". She a coronation party, I danced and gossiped World for"failingto succeeded, having - with the buxom, coquettish Miss Thailand maintain a first-class affairs with Tom Jones and flirted woefully with the indecently public image". During and George Best. sexy Miss Bosnia. I loved it when Miss The Beautg and Best a Colombia introduced herself, Iop, 1973 winner Marjorie Wallace with George Bes't ingenuously it seemed, with the line: she later gave him "3 out of 10 for performance". "Hola! I l am from the land of coffee." Lelt, Rosemarie Frankland, N,1iss World 1961, the enjoyed the cheesy MissWorld dance [JK's first winner, who recentlU 1o0k her own Iife 68 @ www.esquire.co.uk Mrss wsRLrl iI \'- ? v 1984 the MIss World finals, "1. $/ .. MISSAMERICA Penthouse published 'f -:"/ i* i; h Si nger Va nessa photographs of her h+E'ru fif*'-"F Williams was crowned out of her designer - -.+rll4f-" -.,**r- I :Iry*ffi Miss America in 1984, swimwear, below. :* *se but,shortlg before she She was promptlg was due to appear in stripped of her title. (nfi;i,i. ,,_ W0l''1r., Sirilri t Ltbf Pr0fi-r &0 n wl* I d-{," 1d t"*, tvl v, rhL beauty and spend it on the ugly face of the world," said Julia Morley, part-owner of the MissWorld business); for all its importance in the developing world, from the countries of Latin America and Africa to the new economies of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, where MissWorld is a potent symbol not of exploitation but of sexual and personal empowerment... for all this, MissWorld remains a risible irrelevance. Time-locked in a long-gone age of austerity and Stepford Wives, Miss World exhibits all the grey, suburban, reactionary and dogmatic attitudes of her time and her creators. MissWorld has always been a barometer of sexual politics, of the way that women's lives have changed enormously over the past 50 years, and the way men's attitudes to female beauty largely have not. Miss World has been usurped by Page Three, Boywotch, supermodels, the Sundoy Sport, "Theg should shove Miss World in the archives internet porn, plastic surgery, girl power, reality TV, lads' mags, TV babes - even and forget all about he6" said the UK's 1951 winner the Spice Girls. lt has had its day. Recently, Rosemarie Frankland, Miss routines and the kitsch set, built to For all its supposed modernisation Hell hath no furg World 196 I and the United Kingdom's "recreate a lush, tropical Garden of (swimsuit sections pre-recorded on the ...like a woman first beauty queen to win the title, exploited. Protests Eden". I didn't really mind when the beach, no more vital statistics or committed suicide in her Los Angeles against the beautg camp guard chaperones confiscated my national dress, and 33 per cent ofthe apartment. By the time she was found, pageant that will not a tape after my interview with Miss marks given to something called die in 1970, top, and she had been dead for almost a week.