The modern pageants where beauty takes a back seat

Miss World New Zealand pageant winner Navjot Kaur at the Miss World pageant in India earlier this year. Photo / @Navjot Kaur

By Alexia Russell for RNZ

These days if you want to enter a Miss World pageant, the focus is on raising money for charity and making the world a better place.

Miss World is viewed by a worldwide television audience of more than one billion people.

“It’s bigger than the Superbowl. It is big business, and it’s a big deal,” says Nigel Godfrey, the Miss World licence holder in New Zealand.

He has been involved in that business for more than 40 years and is taking it in directions that – some would argue – should have been taken many years ago.

Gone are the bikinis, the shallow interviews, the slightly creepy male compères. In now are serious fundraising efforts, life-changing entrepreneurial tasks and fellowship goals.

Pageants in New Zealand were at their peak in the 1980s, when they were a televised extravaganza and Lorraine Downes won our only world title. They have since changed franchise owners, had financial issues, lost popularity, sponsors and TV contracts, and faded from the public eye.

But it does not take much to raise interest again, and there has been a run of news stories lately – most dramatically, the Miss Fiji debacle where a winner was crowned, suddenly a new judge turned up, accusations of corruption and racism surfaced, and the winner was stripped of her title before being restored to the throne again.

Miss World New Zealand licence holder Nigel Godfrey

We’ve also seen a pregnant 33-year-old enter Miss Universe this year after most of the barriers to entrants were stripped away, and climate activist Brianna Fruean came runner up in Miss Samoa, a competition she entered to give her a platform to talk about the crises currently facing the Pacific Islands.

Godfrey says he would like to see more of that.

“You might be surprised that there’s no stipulations around body shape or anything in Miss Universe. There are others – I’ve heard of competitions where they say, ‘no you can’t send her, she’s too ugly’. That’s ridiculous. But that’s not the case with Miss Universe, not the case with Miss World.

“I would like to see someone who had, perhaps, a physical disability enter. I never have had. There’s nothing stopping them. And I would entertain that entrant just like anyone else.

“I really would like to see more diversity, because it’s about the person. Its ‘beauty with a purpose’ is the Miss World mantra, and where that beauty comes from, it’s not standing on stage.”

Godfrey describes the Miss World finalist this year – Navjot Kaur – as the best representative in any competition he has ever been involved with. She was also the first Sikh woman to represent New Zealand at a Miss World pageant.

The former police officer had “a societal understanding”, he says.

“She just got the world, she got problems, how people struggle and how they work to get out of that struggle. She empathised with everyone. Every contestant just fell in love with her ... and she made a real impact.”

The competition was in India and while she did not win, she represented the country in television interviews as much, says Godfrey, as any Kiwi sportsperson being interviewed after a game.

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