International beauty pageants
for beginners.
Pageantry as a modern phenomenon began on April 19, 1951. The first Miss World contest was organized on that day by British entrepreneur Eric Morley. In a radical cultural upgrade of this type of event, which existed for four or five decades before him in a less historically relevant form, he began to glorify sexually attractive and mentally agile women. While refraining from resurrecting the ancient Greco-Roman rules of beauty pageants, which included a nude defile, he took advantage of a newly invented bikini swimsuit. Coronation of the winner in a swimsuit, which continued annually until the late 70s, was dogmatically condemned by Pope Pius XII. Thus, the Catholic Church has formally recognized the implicit Hellenist nature of this pageant. Spawning a host of imitators and creating the sexiest combination of sports and artistic competition, Morley greatly influenced modern sexuality in a positive manner and founded an entirely new business model. Of course, his wife Julia, who inherited the pageant, eventually succumbed to the pressure of tedious forces and banned swimsuit competition. But that is a temporary setback for the cultural legacy of her deceased husband, who was a lifetime supporter of Margaret Thatcher and campaigned for her during several election cycles.
Miss Universe was created the very next year in America. Although remaining behind Miss World in terms of importance, budget and media reach up until the 90s, it could boast a greater variety of countries taking part. Communist Poland participated since 1958, with communist Yugoslavia joining in the early 70s. This fact shows the even behind the Iron Curtain attitudes to sexuality were vastly different. And ruling Communist Parties allowed greater liberties the further West they were. Unfortunately, my own native country - the Soviet Union - was ruled by gerontocracy up until its end, so it took part just twice. In 1990 and 1991. This would be different had Beria succeeded Stalin instead of Khruschev, as that Georgian had the reputation of most prominent hedonist within the CPSU and occasionally organized similar events in Crimea behind closed doors. Independent Ukraine, however, took part annually, with Kharkiv girl Diana Harkusha achieving our best result so far by placing third in 2014.
Future American President Donald Trump owned this pageant between 1996 and 2015 and had a big role in promoting pageant culture in post-communist countries. All the more incomprehensible was his decision to sell it to lesbian, anti-heterosexual owners during his Presidential campaign. New owners are basically undoing everything he was creating for decades: encourage the participation of transwomen and desexualize the aesthetics as much as they can. Instead of shelving the franchise, or partially gifting it to famous experts in this industry in the vein of Venezuelan “King of Beauty” Osmel Sousa, Trump chose a bigger financial offer despite constantly bragging about how rich he is. Sadly, I suspect that this is a hint that his true outlook and expectations are more pessimistic than he lets us know.
Third place in terms of international relevance was held by the aptly named Japanese pageant Miss International during the Cold War. Closer to the end of the 90s many more competitors began to appear. So today it’s a tie between this one, Thai venture Miss Grand International (where aforementioned Osmel Sousa now works, after being ousted from MU-related franchises through badmouthing and blackmail in pro-DNC propaganda papers New York Times and Washington Post) and Polish project Miss Supranational. Julia Morley continued to undermine the original vision of her husband in the current century, by going hard into male pageants at expense of female ones. In 2021, Mister World is more interesting to homosexuals than Miss World is to heterosexuals. It’s a feature, not a bug.
MGI’s owner Nawat Itsaragrisil can be considered the most faithful pupil of Eric Morley today. He kept the male judges in the wake of #metoo, when MW and MU ditched them in order to capitalize on this fearmongering wave. He regularly fat shames his contestants, disregarding the media fallout of Alicia Machado's story. And he was the last one to crown a black winner. In a time period when most other pageants, especially of Anglo-Nordic origin, crowned them and only them for many years in a row. He may yet play his part in the partial cultural rebirth of the 1970s I advocate for.
As I already said on my Twitter, beauty pageants are a thing that no overtly politicized camp acknowledges as their own. Leftists say it's a right-wing thing. Rightists say it's a left-wing thing. This is yet another reason why they are crucially important to a proper centrist.