Last night, I was at the Regal Hall of Hotel Yak & Yeti to watch the proceedings of the Miss Tourism International Nepal 2005 contest. I wouldn’t have gone if my beloved wife hadn’t designed a piece of dress of one among 13 contestants. Cecilia Gurung won the title, congratulations for her, but the proceeding gave me, an amateur in the field, pretty wrong feelings about the beauty contests.
I first thing I didn’t like was among seven title winners such as best figure, beautiful smile, talent, photogenic, hair, friendship and personality, only two were in the semifinal and only one in the final. Six, including Miss Best Figure Naseem Pradhan, was out of first round in which the contestants did nothing more than walking around and introducing them. I wondered what was there to judge for the judges.
Second thing, the knowledge of the judges. If anybody accepts to be a judge should s/he first talk to organizers about the show, what they have to do and what types of questions they should ask. Consider this question from well-known singer Rupy Singh: Who are the lovers who reunited some time back and their love-story made headlines as the love-story of century? Neetu Gurung wasn’t expecting such questions and surely he was nervous which threw her out of the final. Good that anchoress Malvika Subbha asked her to change her question.
Then, consider this from chief judge Karna Shakya, a well-known tourism visionary: You can’t answer in Nepali in world stage, so answer me in English. Hadn’t organizers told him anybody could take a translator? Contestants were keen to speak in Nepali while judges were keen to go for English.
Then came the final round. Shakya had to repeat his question ([Heritage] Conservation and [Tourism] Development are two faces of a same coin. Prove it.) for half-a-dozen times and still the contestants were not sure they understood the question. From their answers two among five finalists looked like having understood the question while three answered without understanding the question.
More surprisingly, two of those whose answer matched nowhere to the questions were on top three including the winner while Manu Adhikari, who a group of journalists thought have answered best, was left without anything.
The program started more than an hour late (‘that always happens in such program’) and there were contestants who didn’t matched the height required by international standard (‘probably there was no one keen to participate’).
Unless my wife does the designing again, I won’t go to any more beauty contest – that’s for sure.
More about the contest
Organizers – Group of Event Entertainers
Official Site: NepaliSite.com
Interesting Here: Miss Tourism Queen Int’l 2005
