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So the Miss World contest, as we know it, is over. Former model Julia Morley, who inherited her husband's business after his death last November, did not wait terribly long to announce some fundamental readjustments. The 50th year of this dazzling and often dubious story is as good a time as any to ring in changes.
"We have developed a new concept for the show and we're discussing ways we can do something pretty positive towards the contestants' education, with scholarships," Morley told The Observer, London, last week. But this will be more than a new move to educate winners, or losers. The recast formula is expected to introduce many new steps on the way to the title that will mean more than looking good and coming up with a quick smart-ass reply or two.
What these changes will be the Miss World Organisation in London does not say.
But there are indications enough from the organisation to suggest that it wants to steer the competition away just that little bit further from chauvinism—and from India. The competition has always attracted some betting on winners. Today you could bet that the next few years will not see another string of Miss Indias becoming Miss Worlds.
Some amount of irritation is much in evidence at the Miss World Organisation over the domination of the title by Indians in recent years. Staff were quick to brush off the Indian domination of the title last week, soon after Julia Morley announced that the competition will change.
The affair with India is over. This is not deterring Sathya Saran, editor of Femina, which groomed four Indian girls who have won the title in the past seven years, and good friend of Morley. Says she: "There won't be any change in our approach as far as selecting the contenders are concerned.
We choose girls for three contests and so there is no point changing the format of Miss Femina."
It was coming even before Morley spoke up. The Miss World Organisation faced widespread accusations last time that it had been rigged to favour Miss India. The holding of a contest in Bangalore, the buying of broadcast rights by Zee and the successive titles to Miss India have cast the contest in Indian colours they need to shake off if this is to remain Miss World anymore. "Another two wins for Miss India and this will become an Indian show," says a designer closely associated with the last contest. They can have their looks, and their brains all trained up for those two-minute intelligence tests, but the next Miss Indias will enter this title contest with the severe handicap that they're Indian.
"The present format is beauty parades and a quick intelligence test," an executive associated with the contest told Outlook. "Ms Morley is clearly going to change the competition on both counts." By itself that would not worry future Miss Indias. But changes are being made that would give others a better chance. It was pleasant when Hemant Trevedi designed Priyanka Chopra's outfit and then sat among the judges to pronounce her the winner while Zee broadcast it all. The contest is likely to skip such convenient coincidences in the years ahead. It will always be for them to judge who shall judge.
They're balancing out another advantage Miss Indias have held: their ease with English. The intelligence tests as they are called will now take account of the language competitors speak. "At the last contest some of the others could not even understand the questions, let alone reply to them," the executive said.
The contest was supposedly about appearance, poise, personality and intelligence. With allegedly social concerns thrown in. In its early days the show was "more like a cattle market", Morley said, "Now you will see real women of substance who will be tomorrow's lawyers, surgeons and engineers." In the seventies she sought respectability for the title with the slogan "Beauty with a higher purpose". That in effect meant a question or two about the ozone layer and a word or two about orphans. Julia Morley does not see much of the higher purpose she spoke of in the seventies in her late husband's show. But you will now—maybe.
Some of the changes planned should pacify feminists, if not please them. Morley calls the present kind of contest "stupid" and "awful". You'd gather that 50 years of her husband doing this sort of thing would have led to a fair exchange of words between man and wife. Now she can say it openly. "It did seem very unnatural to me as a woman," she says, "that girls should turn, turn, turn on the stage, for a start. And I didn't feel comfortable with swimsuits on stage. Not because I thought there was anything wrong with them, but I thought that you don't generally feel comfortable if someone's interviewing you in a dinner jacket and you're in a swimsuit. I thought it was pretty awful to see women standing there with practically nothing on, with old Aspel saying, 'what did you eat for breakfast?'—it was so stupid." Femina editor Saran doesn't quite agree: "I see nothing against the swimsuit round as long as it is conducted with dignity."
Some of Morley's moves have gladdened hearts at home and abroad. Miss World 1999 Yukta Mookhey says: "I am happy Morley is condering some changes, especially doing away with the swimsuit round. I don't think parading beautiful women on stage compromises their dignity, but there is something awkward about it."
Mookhey says she would be happy to see "some changes in the kind of questions asked". Says she: "I wish I could say the questions should be more difficult but I do understand that it would be a problem for most of the girls from other countries with a language barrier. I also hope there are more talent-related events." Eighteen-year-old Miss Czech Republic Michaela Salacova says: "There is only a two-minute interview for each girl. How will they know our personalities and our true intellectual depth in as little time as that?" Not all contestants are keen on more exacting intelligence tests. Miss France, Karine Meier, said: "I hope they ask real questions about real issues, not just our hobbies." But Miss World 1997 Diana Hayden feels that the contest has already changed. "You don't bullshit them (the judges) any more and tell them that you want to save the world and heal the ozone layer and be Mother Teresa. You can't give up everything. I love life too much," she told The Observer.
But there will still be enough of the old in the new contest. "You can't change things overnight," Julia Morley says. But there are hardly rules or principles to look for here. What Eric Morley wanted the other day, what Julia Morley wants now, who will want what after her...it's as changeable as that. There are no Olympian rules for this strange contest. The contest has been driven by what sells, and what is possible. Driven out of England in the seventies, Eric Morley's contest headed for Latin America, South Africa and then India. And the Dome, which was more India than London.
Miss World is striving today to
hold its own against the American-owned Miss Universe. The Americans came
in with their Miss Universe the year after Eric Morley came in with that
1951 festival, Bikini Girl Contest. Miss World is to Miss Universe what
Wimbledon is to the US Open. But it does seem that Miss India should now
aim for the Universe.
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