Miss World: ‘It’s rather prim for these filthy days… It’s a purity cult’
Miss World was a symbol of hate and division for feminists in the 1970s. Now, in the era of multiculturalism, the pageant is a humanitarian charm offensive (beachwear optional). Tanya Gold meets some of the contestants to hear why they’re taking part and why the competition still exists
When I arrive at the Miss World hotel at Tower Bridge, London, the contestants are sharing the hotel with an insurance claims and fraud summit. The cognitive dissonance is amazing. Young women in blue spangled sashes – Miss This and Miss That – loiter at the check-in desk and mingle with insurance executives, who are as grey as you could imagine. They are two flocks of birds: pigeons and peacocks; and the pigeons stare at the peacocks not with lust, but with awe.
I am here because when I was a child I loved Miss World. It was like contemplating a doll’s house I would never be admitted to – and that was fine. I think I knew it, even then, that such beauty is a complex gift. Even so, I used to watch it with my mother and wonder which, of all of them, was the most beautiful. Then I grew up, became a second-wave feminist and felt queasily guilty, for the Miss World of that era is now remembered as the very definition of objectification.