33 posts tagged “miss universe”

Here were the 80 lovely ladies in their national costume at Miss Universe 2008.

   This must be a first for the pageant (at least in my memory) that it has had two English-born hosts—Jerry Springer from London and Melanie Brown from Leeds.

[Cross-posted] Miss Venezuela, Dayana Mendoza, has won Miss Universe 2008, with Miss Colombia, Taliana Vargas, runner-up. Dominican Republic, Russia and Mexico rounded off the top five.
   Miss Mendoza, 20, hails from Caracas, and is already a model represented by Élite Model Management.
   The 57th Miss Universe contest was held in the coastal town of Nha Trang, Khánh Hòa, Vietnam, during the morning of July 14. It was broadcast live on Sunday night to American audiences.
   The show was compèred by Jerry Springer, who had hosted Miss World in the past. Melanie Brown, formerly of the Spice Girls, co-hosted and sang during the telecast.
   The judges were Donald Trump, Jr, Roberto Cavalli, Nadine Velazquez, Jennifer Hawkins, Louis Licari, John Nguyen, Joseph Cinque, Eesha Koppikhar and Taryn Rose.
  Special awards went to Miss El Salvador (Miss Congeniality) and Miss Thailand (Best in National Costume, decided by online voting).

It’s quite easy to work out the agenda of the mainstream media when it comes to an article like this, trying to harm Samantha Powell’s chances at Miss Universe tomorrow night.

• Personal aggrandizement of the journalist, or, if not the journalist, then the newspaper editors or management trying to look like they can set agenda. (The part about Val Lott hanging up the phone, I understand, is total fiction—so if something so minor is untrue, can we trust the rest?)
• Trying to cause a split between pākehā and Māori when in fact there is none. Fact: the photograph of Samantha Powell doing the pukana was actually published in mid-June—and even ran in a rival newspaper here! There were no complaints from anyone, Māori or any other group, until the Herald made it a race issue yesterday. Or the Herald is trying to play catch-up because it missed the photos a month ago and was desperate for a fresh angle.
• Racism: come on, the headline is clearly poking fun at Māori and the pukana. I don’t appreciate the newspaper doing that, and I would say my Māori friends would be more upset at that than the Herald’s false defence of the haka. Like a newspaper owned by Australians and the Irish really understands Māoridom.
• Implying that two beauty queens are at odds with one another. False. Samantha Powell is in communicado for the most part in Nha Trong, Vietnam, and I severely doubt Miss World New Zealand, Kahurangi Taylor, would risk criticizing another pageant for fear of damaging her own chances when she goes to Miss World.
• Tall-poppy syndrome. (The newspaper failed there: the judges decided their top 15 last week.)
• Lack of patriotism: you would never drag the All Blacks down a peg the day before a big international. And places like Venezuela treat Miss Universe with greater fervour than we treat a rugby match. But an absence of supporting New Zealand is understandable, since The New Zealand Herald is owned by a company listed on the Australian exchange and in turn owned in part by a company based in Dublin. Pity: their business pages are good, so it’s a shame some of these others are dragging them down.

   My views about the appropriateness of Samantha Powell’s haka are at the Lucire blog. I agree that Māori culture should be defended. But you couldn’t really call it a haka. She just did a few moves. It would be like a Caucasian donning a lion mask and moving two metres and calling that a Chinese New Year’s lion dance.
   As I said in Lucire: ‘I know of no Māori who, while rightly guarding against improper use of their culture, would deny a chance for it to be promoted or be rendered so “untouchable” to those who came later to Aotearoa. In fact, one kaumatua I spoke to says it is our duty, regardless of our ethnic origins, to be promoting Māori culture when we are abroad. 
   ‘Sometimes, because we have not been immersed in the culture, we err. It is to be expected. And, when the one who errs is not of our own race, we forgive and we educate, but we do not criticize.
   ‘All New Zealanders should be proud to propagate Māori culture as the alternative would be to ignore it and pretend we are mere facsimile of Great Britain, as many Kiwis did 50 years ago.’
   I’d hate to see us head back to those monocultural times—though it looks like the Herald wants that to happen by running a story like this.
   Since the newspaper has been shifting a lot of its work to Australia, I imagine an Anglicized monoculture makes it easier to take more editing work away from Kiwis.
   Any time you see a story about over-sensitive Māori getting upset about the way the culture has been portrayed, think again about the agenda.
   All the Māori I know put mana first and actually see this as an opportunity to reach out and educate in order to promote their culture. 
   A big fail for the Herald. Sam’s still going to wow the world tomorrow night.

[Cross-posted] Miss New Zealand, Samantha Powell, flew out to Vietnam a couple of weeks ago and the Fairfax Press gave her a bit of a boost yesterday in the local media. It’s in stark contrast to the hatchet job the same publishing group gave her predecessor, Laural Barrett, last year.
   If you head to the Miss Universe site now, there is a good selection of images, plus Sam’s video interview. The more casual shots are the better ones, in my opinion—having photographed her myself there’s a good, real energy about her.
   But it’s hard to be negative about any of the shots of any of the contestants: we are talking Miss Universe here.
   The contestants get to Miss Universe and are given a photo shoot and their video interview fairly early on.
   I have had a brief email from Sam after her arrival and she is loving it. Both pageant director Val Lott and I agree that nothing seems to faze her.

Allan Parker, husband of Miss Universe New Zealand organizer Val Lott, took this great photograph not long after Laural Barrett, Miss New Zealand 2007, handed her crown to her successor, Samantha Powell. Sam is holding back a few tears here as she took the prize on Sunday night at the Novotel in Ellerslie.
   We’ve had a lot more press interest this year compared to 2007, so it does appear that beauty pageants are coming back into favour in New Zealand.

My scanner has gone kaput and I’m now three weeks in the process of getting it fixed. You know—ordering a part, having it arrive, finding it’s totally wrong (as in: the part does not even exist inside this model of scanner), and now, having a really annoying moiré effect on photographs that do not have a dot screen!
   I’m less than impressed as I have some lovely photographs from my judging of Miss Universe New Zealand 2008. Girls: don’t worry—the embarrassing ones won’t wind up anywhere on the ’net, though I may email them to you directly.
   These are off one of those newfangled cellphones. The good 35 mm ones will have to wait.

Miss Wellington, Rebecca Connor, sponsored by the Establishment Bar, on the launch to Waiheke. Rebecca was in the top five and, from what I can tell, a crowd favourite. Samantha Powell, Miss Horowhenua, who later won the title of Miss Universe New Zealand 2008. Even in this shot she seems to have a natural beauty. Some of the top-placed contestants are here in a very leggy shot: Rebecca Connor, Hannah Matthews (runner-up, sponsored by Masport), Samantha Powell are present from left to right. From right to left are Kylie Anderson (sponsored by C. R. Johnson), who was second runner-up in 2006, and Sylvia Laurenson (sponsored by Bettjemans), runner-up in 2007, both re-entering (Sylvia came in the top five this year). That leaves Kylie Warfield third from right—not a contestant, but one of the chaperones and assistants, who could have easily come in a top position herself in this competition. (She was Miss New Zealand Asia-Pacific 2005.) The wake from the launch out to Waiheke. The girls do not starve themselves, as you can see—yep, that’s cream on the top of that glass being delivered to Miss Wanganui, Michelle Kleinsmith. And it’s one of two such glasses heading to this table. And if we judges got bored between the parades on Waiheke, we had this happening on our table. Mating season—and a bit of post-coital activity. Poor bastard is being eaten by the missus. Talk about seriously violent domestics.

In the 1960s, there was Peyton Place. Then we had Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate, which I think should have been named Satan Place. Now, MTV is premièring a show called Pageant Place, which I think is somewhere between the two: a reality TV show on pageantry, images of pretty girls, cameos by the Don, possibly misrepresentative editing, and the universe of Miss Universe and Miss USA. Begins Wednesday, October 10 at 10.30 p.m. Stateside. Trailer at the Miss Universe site.

It looks like Miss Japan, Riyo Mori, is Miss Universe 2007, with Miss Brazil as runner-up. Congratulations—and I hope tomorrow’s NHK News that I watch will be less dull as a result!

Darn, no Laural.

Venezuela
Thailand
Denmark
Nicaragua
Angola
Slovenia
USA
Brazil
India
Mexico
Japan
Ukraine
Tanzania
South Korea
Czech Republic

Good luck to those who made it into the top 15. I have my biases though.

Good signs: the Irish newspaper (The New Zealand Herald) has been pretty supportive of Laural Barrett so far and I was interested to read that the Murdoch Press has been positive in its coverage of Miss New Zealand, quoting Miss Australia Kimberly Busteed. It’s in stark contrast to how Fairfax treated Laural after her win, though a few weeks ago, she did rate a footnote in the Australian newspaper group’s Stuff website.