Are beauty queens getting 'ugly'

Saturday, July 3, 2010 (The Mirror Pg 27)

By Rebecca Kwei
As Ghanaians bask in the exploits of the Black Stars at the ongoing World Cup, one lady who may not be having fun right now is TV3’s Ghana’s Most Beautiful, Nasara Mariam Abdul Rauf.
Nasara has been stripped of her title by the organisers of the pageant, TV3, for allegedly stealing a mobile phone belonging to Miss UK when they camped in the Philippines in preparation for the Miss Earth 2009.
Nasara, however, insists she did not steal any phone but only ‘borrowed’ the phone to make calls.
“As far as I know, I am still Ghana’s Most Beautiful. I don’t have any problem with TV3, everything that is being said about me is false rumour and I leave it all to God” she told the Graphic Showbiz.
TV3 also says it arrived at the decision to strip Nasara of her title after series of investigations, internal discussions and evidence it had. The lady whose phone has caused the controversy is Miss UK, Kirsty Nichol who works as a model and lives in London. She is also a trained singer under the Royal Associated Board and the Academy Of Contemporary Music. She was crowned Miss Earth England 2009 at the Royal Leamington Spa in Warwickshire, England.
The evidence TV3 had was an e-mail from Miss UK which was an itemised phone bill with lots of calls to Ghana at a time that the chip had disappeared. Efforts to get her comments on the unfolding drama were not successful.
In another development, Laura Anness, a teacher who was crowned Miss Cornwall and was set to participate in the Miss England final in Birmingham, has lost her crown after the organisers of the pageant discovered she had deceived them.
Her entry forms for 2010 said she was 22. So, too, were her entry forms for the competition in 2006, 2007 and 2008. Laura is, in fact, 27. Entrants have to be aged between 17 and 24. To make matters worse, the new Miss Cornwall actually lived in Plymouth — in Devon.
She was found out when Miss Cornwall organiser, Becky Chapman, spotted the age inconsistencies on the entry forms and then went to visit her Devon home.
Laura apologised and handed back her sash, crown, her 12-month modelling contract and £2,000 worth of prizes.
Another beauty queen, Venus Raj, who won the Pilipinas Universe title in the Philippines on March 6, 2010, was also stripped of her crown when the organisers discovered inconsistencies contained in her birth records, in contrast to her personal account of her birth.
In 2008, there was the case of a Mexican beauty queen, Laura Zuniga, who was detained on suspicion of drug and weapons violation was stripped of her crown in the Hispanoamerican queen pageant.
Laura was detained on December 22, 2008 along with seven men, some of them suspected to be drug traffickers. Authorities found a large stash of weapons, ammunition and $53,300 with them inside a vehicle.