Under a new law, Gaming Act 2006, anyone wishing to organise a game of chance including beauty contests, sales promotion, television reality shows and SMS quiz games will need to acquire authorisation from the Gaming Commission first.
Recurring contestants’ complaints about non-delivery of promised prizes, viewers’ doubts over transparency in the scoring of television reality shows and public concerns over the methods used to determine games of chance using mobile phone SMS could be things of the past.
A not-so-new law, Gaming Act 2006, which revised and consolidates the laws relating to gaming activities is beginning to flex its muscle with the coming into being of the Gaming Commission under the Ministry of Interior whose business is to regulate, control, monitor and supervise the operation of games of chance in this country.
Under the law anyone wishing to organise a game of chance including beauty contests, sales promotion, television reality shows and SMS quiz games will need to acquire authorisation from the Gaming Commission first.
For the past few years, considerable furore has been raised in public over unpaid prizes for beauty pageant winners. In one case, a reigning Miss Ghana had to go to court to claim her prize and in another, the organisers resorted to paying the prize in instalments.
In yet another pageant, the contestants were told after the show that they should consider their participation as charity.
“That will not happen again, the Gaming Commissioner Mr Alex Baafour Gyimah told Showbiz, “My office demands that any organiser of such a pageant has to come to talk with us.”
Mr Gyimah said that game of chance organisers are expected to meet three simple requirements. First they are to visit the offices of the Gaming Commission located in Fortune House on the premises of the Department of National Lotteries in Accra to present their proposal to the commission. “At this stage, we will discuss the proposal and determine whether the game can be run.
The second requirement is for the organisers to apply in writing stating the nature of the game, the prizes to be given and the manner in which winners will be determined. Organisers are expected to pay GH¢50 as application fee.
Finally, the organisers are expected to convince the commission that they are adequately resourced to carry out the game of chance and be ready to pay five percent of the net value of prizes to the commission after the event.
“Our job is to protect the public,” Mr Gyimah said. “Our intention is neither to discourage people from going into promotions nor to criminalise promotions” but he was quick to add that the commission has the authority to invoke sanctions for non-compliance as set out in the Gaming Act.
Mr Gyimah expressed satisfaction with the co-operation that his office has so far engaged with almost all of the television stations which carry reality shows on their networks. He said that since the commission sent letters round a few months ago, all prospective organisers of reality shows on television have been to the commission to discuss their shows and to seek authority.
Only a few months old, the commission is yet to take off strongly but even at this stage, Mr Gyimah appears quite satisfied with what has been achieved with regard to their monitoring and supervisory roles.
“We have been quite busy poring over newspaper adverts, listening to radio and watching television for news of any game of chance activities and it is in the interest of organisers and promoters to talk to us first to avoid having their programmes brought to an abrupt end”, Mr Gyimah said.
“We expect honest dealings on the part of game organisers and not to take the public for granted.
Story by Nana Banyin Dadson
Source: Modern Ghana
Showing posts with label Controversy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Controversy. Show all posts
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Friday, October 5, 2007
Kidnappers, perjury and beauty queens: The stormy saga of Miss Georgia 2007
By Ana Datiashvili
Georgia’s biggest summer news story didn’t involve reneging ex-ministers. It wasn’t about malfunctioning missiles, state privatizations or government shakeups.
The country’s most urgent contretemps revolved around an 18-year-old divorcee and an international beauty pageant.
Unless you spent the summer huddled in a Vardzia cave, you’ve heard bits and pieces of the story. This is all of it.
A questionable victory
On July 14 in sunny seaside Batumi, the Miss Georgia beauty pageant crowned 18-year-old Nino Likuchova its lucky 2007 winner. But when Likuchova placed that peacock-esque diadem upon her head, she contravened five decades of international Miss World bylaws.
Ms. Likuchova was married. Or was she? In Georgia, a simple question often isn’t.
The unwilling bride
The first spark in an inflammatory controversy came when intrepid Alia journalist Dito Tikaradze dug up wedding photos and records of a bitter court case. When the Alia journo called Likuchova to ask about the nuptial stills, he says, Likuchova denied ever being married. The newspaper went ahead and published the story August 2. The abrupt scrutiny forced Likuchova to confront a trauma she would rather have left in her past. The embattled Miss Georgia retracted her denial, and went public with her story: she was bride kidnapped.
“I didn’t have a happy face, and anyone could guess after seeing my pictures that I was not a real bride,” she calmly told the cameras on an Imedi TV talk show. “I agreed to the wedding, because [his family] was menacing me, and I saw that this was the only way to get rid of them.”
He said, she said, he won
Likuchova never explained the history between her and Merab Abashidze. Wedding photos show a blue-suited man, young but with graying hair, half-smiling as he props himself upright with crutches. His 16-year-old bride wears a white veil over an inscrutable face. No one is saying what happened between the wedding day and Likuchova’s day in court. Their church wedding was never legally registered, so the court case was not for a divorce—it was to press charges against Abashidze for abducting her. But after learning her alleged kidnapper faced more than two decades in the slammer, Likuchova recounts, she had a change of heart.
“I would be pitiless, if I let sit him in prison for 22 years,” she later said. “That’s why I decided to change my testimony—but this kindness went against me.”
In a bitter turnaround, Likuchova’s recantation led to her being convicted of perjury and placed on two years’ probation. Abashidze strenuously denies having resorted to kidnapping his inamorata.
“I never did anything to her by force. If I wanted to become her legitimate husband by force, I would have taken her to [the Tbilisi registrar’s office], but we were in church, having our marriage blessed,” Abashidze told tenacious journalists as the story unfolded.
The court believed him. According to Alia, he won the case by showing the court his wedding photographs—and by pointing out the difficulties he, a physically handicapped man, would have in forcing a teenage girl to marry him.
The controversy continues…and continues…
Miss World’s preliminary national competitions are carried out by license holders from Brazil to Angola to Romania. Ia Kintsmarishvili’s Image Center is the license holder of Miss Georgia for five years running.
“I protest against the violence,” Kintsmarishvili said. “Nino [Likuchova] was a victim, so instead of discussing her eligibility, we should think about how many girls are stuck in the same situation, and how they’ll get out if it.”
Despite her apparent concern for victimized young women, Kintsmarishvili kept media attention on the Miss Georgia competition. The pageant organizer convened a series of coquettish press conferences throughout the summer, each time promising to disclose the professional fate of the unfortunate M(r)s. Likuchova—and repeatedly pushing off any final announcements for yet another Image Center-sponsored press event.
By September, the time had come to put the scandal to rest.
The Image Center matriarch went on live TV to make her announcement: the council of esteemed beauty pageant jurists had reached its decision. Miss Georgia Nino Likuchova would keep her sparkling tiara, the council decreed, and the prizes—including a shiny new Peugeot—lavished upon her as the most beautiful woman in Georgia. But she would not be going to China to vie for the global title. Instead, second runner-up and lifelong bachelorette Tamuna Nemsitsveridze will carry Georgia’s hopes and dreams on her size 0 shoulders.
And the first runner-up, Nino Lekveishvili? She too was wed in younger days, the 20 year old admitted. Organizers stripped her of her title, elevating Nemsitsveridze to second place.
Miss World’s international headquarters told the Messenger they’re nothing but sympathetic bystanders in the dramatic tale of Miss Georgia 2007.
“Our reaction here is one of sadness for both the Miss Georgia Organisation and Nino Likuchova and anybody else that is involved in forcing anyone to do anything against their will,” said Julia Morley, a Miss World spokeswoman.
A teenage girl, trying to move on
At just 18, Likuchova is burdened with memories of a tragic wedding and a wrecked modelling career. And yet, coming clean on national television, she asked for forgiveness and understanding.
“I want to apologize to the public, and to the pageant jury…I never felt like I was married. I consulted with priests, and they told me that an obligatory ceremony does not make a real marriage. Getting married was the only way for me to get out of that hell. I was just trying to get back to my family.”
Now, Likuchova is back at university in Batumi, trying to put the entire episode behind her.
She would not put up a fight if they decided to take her title, she says: it’s caused her enough trouble already.
Source: The Messenger
Georgia’s biggest summer news story didn’t involve reneging ex-ministers. It wasn’t about malfunctioning missiles, state privatizations or government shakeups.
The country’s most urgent contretemps revolved around an 18-year-old divorcee and an international beauty pageant.
Unless you spent the summer huddled in a Vardzia cave, you’ve heard bits and pieces of the story. This is all of it.
A questionable victory
On July 14 in sunny seaside Batumi, the Miss Georgia beauty pageant crowned 18-year-old Nino Likuchova its lucky 2007 winner. But when Likuchova placed that peacock-esque diadem upon her head, she contravened five decades of international Miss World bylaws.
Ms. Likuchova was married. Or was she? In Georgia, a simple question often isn’t.
The unwilling bride
The first spark in an inflammatory controversy came when intrepid Alia journalist Dito Tikaradze dug up wedding photos and records of a bitter court case. When the Alia journo called Likuchova to ask about the nuptial stills, he says, Likuchova denied ever being married. The newspaper went ahead and published the story August 2. The abrupt scrutiny forced Likuchova to confront a trauma she would rather have left in her past. The embattled Miss Georgia retracted her denial, and went public with her story: she was bride kidnapped.
“I didn’t have a happy face, and anyone could guess after seeing my pictures that I was not a real bride,” she calmly told the cameras on an Imedi TV talk show. “I agreed to the wedding, because [his family] was menacing me, and I saw that this was the only way to get rid of them.”
He said, she said, he won
Likuchova never explained the history between her and Merab Abashidze. Wedding photos show a blue-suited man, young but with graying hair, half-smiling as he props himself upright with crutches. His 16-year-old bride wears a white veil over an inscrutable face. No one is saying what happened between the wedding day and Likuchova’s day in court. Their church wedding was never legally registered, so the court case was not for a divorce—it was to press charges against Abashidze for abducting her. But after learning her alleged kidnapper faced more than two decades in the slammer, Likuchova recounts, she had a change of heart.
“I would be pitiless, if I let sit him in prison for 22 years,” she later said. “That’s why I decided to change my testimony—but this kindness went against me.”
In a bitter turnaround, Likuchova’s recantation led to her being convicted of perjury and placed on two years’ probation. Abashidze strenuously denies having resorted to kidnapping his inamorata.
“I never did anything to her by force. If I wanted to become her legitimate husband by force, I would have taken her to [the Tbilisi registrar’s office], but we were in church, having our marriage blessed,” Abashidze told tenacious journalists as the story unfolded.
The court believed him. According to Alia, he won the case by showing the court his wedding photographs—and by pointing out the difficulties he, a physically handicapped man, would have in forcing a teenage girl to marry him.
The controversy continues…and continues…
Miss World’s preliminary national competitions are carried out by license holders from Brazil to Angola to Romania. Ia Kintsmarishvili’s Image Center is the license holder of Miss Georgia for five years running.
“I protest against the violence,” Kintsmarishvili said. “Nino [Likuchova] was a victim, so instead of discussing her eligibility, we should think about how many girls are stuck in the same situation, and how they’ll get out if it.”
Despite her apparent concern for victimized young women, Kintsmarishvili kept media attention on the Miss Georgia competition. The pageant organizer convened a series of coquettish press conferences throughout the summer, each time promising to disclose the professional fate of the unfortunate M(r)s. Likuchova—and repeatedly pushing off any final announcements for yet another Image Center-sponsored press event.
By September, the time had come to put the scandal to rest.
The Image Center matriarch went on live TV to make her announcement: the council of esteemed beauty pageant jurists had reached its decision. Miss Georgia Nino Likuchova would keep her sparkling tiara, the council decreed, and the prizes—including a shiny new Peugeot—lavished upon her as the most beautiful woman in Georgia. But she would not be going to China to vie for the global title. Instead, second runner-up and lifelong bachelorette Tamuna Nemsitsveridze will carry Georgia’s hopes and dreams on her size 0 shoulders.
And the first runner-up, Nino Lekveishvili? She too was wed in younger days, the 20 year old admitted. Organizers stripped her of her title, elevating Nemsitsveridze to second place.
Miss World’s international headquarters told the Messenger they’re nothing but sympathetic bystanders in the dramatic tale of Miss Georgia 2007.
“Our reaction here is one of sadness for both the Miss Georgia Organisation and Nino Likuchova and anybody else that is involved in forcing anyone to do anything against their will,” said Julia Morley, a Miss World spokeswoman.
A teenage girl, trying to move on
At just 18, Likuchova is burdened with memories of a tragic wedding and a wrecked modelling career. And yet, coming clean on national television, she asked for forgiveness and understanding.
“I want to apologize to the public, and to the pageant jury…I never felt like I was married. I consulted with priests, and they told me that an obligatory ceremony does not make a real marriage. Getting married was the only way for me to get out of that hell. I was just trying to get back to my family.”
Now, Likuchova is back at university in Batumi, trying to put the entire episode behind her.
She would not put up a fight if they decided to take her title, she says: it’s caused her enough trouble already.
Source: The Messenger
Monday, September 24, 2007
Winners Cite Broken Promises in Pageants
Ashley Wood, Miss South Carolina 2004, attends the Wharton School. She has not been able to collect her pageant scholarships. (Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times)By JENNIFER 8. LEE
When Ashley Wood was crowned Miss South Carolina in 2004, she thought her title came not only with a tiara and a shot at Miss America, but also a $20,000 state scholarship and $5,000 national pageant scholarship.
Ms. Wood said Miss America scholarship winners “encounter one obstacle after another.”This fall, Ms. Wood entered the Wharton School, the business-studies arm of the University of Pennsylvania. But she has yet to receive any of that scholarship money, having been locked in a dispute with the Miss South Carolina pageant for more than two years.
“You are talking about an organization that is promoting itself as the largest scholarship provider for women in the world,” Ms. Wood, 26, said of the Miss America Organization. “When contestants try to collect their funds, they encounter one obstacle after another.”
Ms. Wood said she was told that she would not get the $20,000 for winning the Miss South Carolina pageant in part because her two local pageants had not paid her $950 that she had won from them (Ms. Wood said that after she enrolled in classes, one group reneged on payment and the other dodged her when she tried to collect). In turn, because she did not receive the state money, the national pageant sent her a letter in June saying she was ineligible for the $5,000 from it, even though the deadline to use her national scholarship had not passed. “It’s like a game of gotcha,” she said. “What is very clear to me is that the goal is to not give out the scholarships if at all possible.”
Ms. Wood’s is among the most prominent disputes in recent years involving the pageant system, which endures — albeit diminished — since network television dropped the Miss America Pageant in 2004. But there have long been complaints that the 1,200 local and 52 state pageants run under the aegis of the national pageant often do not distribute scholarships to winners. The contestants say their difficulties collecting their money surprise them, given that the Miss America system promotes itself as a scholarship pageant rather than a beauty pageant, unlike its main rival, the Miss USA contest.
Interviews with contestants across the country describe a Miss America system in which local pageant directors do not return telephone calls and e-mail messages for months, local competitions close down before scholarships are distributed, and the fine print in contracts creates hurdles. Local winners across the country have threatened legal action, and some have taken it.
Pageant organizers at each level of the Miss America system say that such problems are the exception and that they occur because contestants miss deadlines or do not dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s to get paid.
In a statement, the Miss America Organization, based in Linwood, N.J., said: “While it is unimaginable that scholarships, which are the heart and soul of Miss America, could or would be wrongly withheld from pageant participants, we are looking into these allegations. We have definitive procedures in place to vet disputes and guarantee state organizations stand behind their scholarship agreements with the Miss America Organization and those to whom scholarships are promised.”
The statement added, “The Miss America Organization is absolutely unaware of any young lady that has ever been denied payment of scholarships after properly following the application process.”
Gail M. Sanders, comptroller of the Miss South Carolina contest, declined to discuss Ms. Wood’s case but said, “To my knowledge there is not a single contestant in the state of South Carolina who has abided by the rules who has not been paid.”
Carrie Davis Cousar, Miss South Carolina 1992, sued the pageant and settled a short time later; the terms were not disclosed. Last year, the South Carolina secretary of state investigated the Miss South Carolina competition and fined it $2,000 in March for not having its financial papers in order.
Pageant organizers and contestants at the local and state levels describe a system plagued by weak oversight and run largely by 100,000 volunteers. The local competitions, franchised by the 52 state pageants, have no legal ties to the national organization, though they feed contestants into the national pageant, which moved to Las Vegas from Atlantic City last year and will be broadcast on the TLC cable channel in January. And the local pageants vary in how well they are administered, contestants and administrators say.
Safiya Songhai, Miss Five Boroughs of New York in 2004, said she struggled to get the $1,000 scholarship she won. “I had been warned by a girl who won before me that I’m not going to see that money,” said Ms. Songhai, who said that in contrast, she had no problem collecting $5,000 as a runner-up to Miss District of Columbia in 2001 and 2003.
She filed and won a case by default in small claims court in Manhattan after the director of the Miss Five Boroughs Scholarship Pageant failed to respond to messages left over five months. When she still had not received her scholarship, she took her story to a local television station. She was paid within two days of the broadcast of her account, she said. The organizer of the now-disbanded pageant did not return calls for comment.
“Basically, if I hadn’t gone after them, I wouldn’t have gotten my money,” Ms. Songhai said. “There is no real checks and balances to make sure the contestants get their money.” She said that competing in Miss Five Boroughs was fun, but added, “They are disorganized and they are bad with money management.”
Saidah Story won a $1,000 scholarship as Miss Inland Empire 2003 in California, but her mother, Renee Wickman, said the pageant director informed her that there would be no scholarship.
“Instead of the scholarship, she was like, ‘You can take these gowns,’ ” Ms. Wickman said. The pageant folded after that year. Bob Arnhym, president of the Miss California Pageant, said the Miss Inland Empire director moved to Canada because her mother had fallen ill, but had notified the state she had given Ms. Story “the full value of the scholarship.”
Despite contractual agreements, the state organizations say they have only limited enforcement of local scholarships.
“Is there something that the state can do? In short, the answer is really no,” said Paul Brown, executive director of Miss New York. “While we require that they maintain scholarship bank accounts while they are in existence, we have no control over what happens to that,” he said. “The only control that we have is over them maintaining a legal franchise.”
In theory, state pageants could take local pageants to court, but “that legal battle is prohibitive financially,” Mr. Brown said. “It’s not worth doing that for a scholarship which is $1,000.”
Still, state-level executives will step in at times. Sherry Rush, the executive director of the Miss Maryland competition, said the organization tried to help Ashley Windle, Miss Chesapeake Bay 2006, and Kristy Chance, Miss Prince George’s County 2004, after they were unable to collect scholarship money from their local pageants. They have yet to be paid, however.
Source: The New York Times
“You are talking about an organization that is promoting itself as the largest scholarship provider for women in the world,” Ms. Wood, 26, said of the Miss America Organization. “When contestants try to collect their funds, they encounter one obstacle after another.”
Ms. Wood said she was told that she would not get the $20,000 for winning the Miss South Carolina pageant in part because her two local pageants had not paid her $950 that she had won from them (Ms. Wood said that after she enrolled in classes, one group reneged on payment and the other dodged her when she tried to collect). In turn, because she did not receive the state money, the national pageant sent her a letter in June saying she was ineligible for the $5,000 from it, even though the deadline to use her national scholarship had not passed. “It’s like a game of gotcha,” she said. “What is very clear to me is that the goal is to not give out the scholarships if at all possible.”
Ms. Wood’s is among the most prominent disputes in recent years involving the pageant system, which endures — albeit diminished — since network television dropped the Miss America Pageant in 2004. But there have long been complaints that the 1,200 local and 52 state pageants run under the aegis of the national pageant often do not distribute scholarships to winners. The contestants say their difficulties collecting their money surprise them, given that the Miss America system promotes itself as a scholarship pageant rather than a beauty pageant, unlike its main rival, the Miss USA contest.
Interviews with contestants across the country describe a Miss America system in which local pageant directors do not return telephone calls and e-mail messages for months, local competitions close down before scholarships are distributed, and the fine print in contracts creates hurdles. Local winners across the country have threatened legal action, and some have taken it.
Pageant organizers at each level of the Miss America system say that such problems are the exception and that they occur because contestants miss deadlines or do not dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s to get paid.
In a statement, the Miss America Organization, based in Linwood, N.J., said: “While it is unimaginable that scholarships, which are the heart and soul of Miss America, could or would be wrongly withheld from pageant participants, we are looking into these allegations. We have definitive procedures in place to vet disputes and guarantee state organizations stand behind their scholarship agreements with the Miss America Organization and those to whom scholarships are promised.”
The statement added, “The Miss America Organization is absolutely unaware of any young lady that has ever been denied payment of scholarships after properly following the application process.”
Gail M. Sanders, comptroller of the Miss South Carolina contest, declined to discuss Ms. Wood’s case but said, “To my knowledge there is not a single contestant in the state of South Carolina who has abided by the rules who has not been paid.”
Carrie Davis Cousar, Miss South Carolina 1992, sued the pageant and settled a short time later; the terms were not disclosed. Last year, the South Carolina secretary of state investigated the Miss South Carolina competition and fined it $2,000 in March for not having its financial papers in order.
Pageant organizers and contestants at the local and state levels describe a system plagued by weak oversight and run largely by 100,000 volunteers. The local competitions, franchised by the 52 state pageants, have no legal ties to the national organization, though they feed contestants into the national pageant, which moved to Las Vegas from Atlantic City last year and will be broadcast on the TLC cable channel in January. And the local pageants vary in how well they are administered, contestants and administrators say.
Safiya Songhai, Miss Five Boroughs of New York in 2004, said she struggled to get the $1,000 scholarship she won. “I had been warned by a girl who won before me that I’m not going to see that money,” said Ms. Songhai, who said that in contrast, she had no problem collecting $5,000 as a runner-up to Miss District of Columbia in 2001 and 2003.
She filed and won a case by default in small claims court in Manhattan after the director of the Miss Five Boroughs Scholarship Pageant failed to respond to messages left over five months. When she still had not received her scholarship, she took her story to a local television station. She was paid within two days of the broadcast of her account, she said. The organizer of the now-disbanded pageant did not return calls for comment.
“Basically, if I hadn’t gone after them, I wouldn’t have gotten my money,” Ms. Songhai said. “There is no real checks and balances to make sure the contestants get their money.” She said that competing in Miss Five Boroughs was fun, but added, “They are disorganized and they are bad with money management.”
Saidah Story won a $1,000 scholarship as Miss Inland Empire 2003 in California, but her mother, Renee Wickman, said the pageant director informed her that there would be no scholarship.
“Instead of the scholarship, she was like, ‘You can take these gowns,’ ” Ms. Wickman said. The pageant folded after that year. Bob Arnhym, president of the Miss California Pageant, said the Miss Inland Empire director moved to Canada because her mother had fallen ill, but had notified the state she had given Ms. Story “the full value of the scholarship.”
Despite contractual agreements, the state organizations say they have only limited enforcement of local scholarships.
“Is there something that the state can do? In short, the answer is really no,” said Paul Brown, executive director of Miss New York. “While we require that they maintain scholarship bank accounts while they are in existence, we have no control over what happens to that,” he said. “The only control that we have is over them maintaining a legal franchise.”
In theory, state pageants could take local pageants to court, but “that legal battle is prohibitive financially,” Mr. Brown said. “It’s not worth doing that for a scholarship which is $1,000.”
Still, state-level executives will step in at times. Sherry Rush, the executive director of the Miss Maryland competition, said the organization tried to help Ashley Windle, Miss Chesapeake Bay 2006, and Kristy Chance, Miss Prince George’s County 2004, after they were unable to collect scholarship money from their local pageants. They have yet to be paid, however.
Source: The New York Times
Friday, September 21, 2007
Dethroned beauty queen defends her actions, points finger at accusers
Targets another contestant's mom, who works for the DA
By Sylvie Belmond belmond@theacorn.com
Miss Ventura County 2005, who was dethroned the same year and later accused by pageant organizers of theft and perjury, fought back Friday at a press event organized by her attorney.
Hilary Gushwa, then a Moorpark resident, lost her title and the right to wear her crown when pageant officials learned she was married at the time she participated in the local competition.
Gushwa says she is the target of an "angry beauty pageant mother who is upset that her daughter lost a competition."
"I won Miss Ventura County 2005. I applied for the competition in August of 2004 and every representation I made in my application was true and accurate," Gushwa said Friday.
Records show Gushwa got married in Las Vegas on Oct. 10, 2004. The pageant took place Oct. 23, 2004.
Pageant rules dictate that entrants "must never have been married, never had a marriage annulled, or been pregnant."
The Ventura County Scholarship Association, which organizes the pageant, sued Gushwa for $5,000 in small claims court earlier this year, alleging that she knowingly and fraudulently misrepresented herself as single in order to compete. The civil court awarded the association $3,121 in July. Gushwa paid the debt.
Pageant organizers filed a police report in August, accusing Gushwa of grand theft and alleging she committed perjury during the civil trial.
In self -defense
Last week Gushwa, speaking outside her attorney's office in Ventura, refuted the allegations. Along with her attorney, Ron Bamieh, she pointed the finger at Jackie Youngern, a committee member of the Ventura County Scholarship Association.
Bamieh maintains Gushwa committed no malfeasance when she accepted the title, and said the driving force behind the allegations is Youngern, is the mother of another 2005 pageant contestant.
He alleged that Youngern used her professional credentials as an investigative assistant with the Ventura County district attorney's office to intimidate witnesses and solicit clerks at government offices to obtain records.
"It's beneath her, it should not be done," said Bamieh, who had worked on several unrelated cases with Youngern when he was employed at the DA's office.
Gushwa said her family has received disturbing phone calls and been harassed since the filing of a police report made the allegations public.
On the subject of the missing crown- actually a tiara- Gushwa said she had given it to a seriously ill young girl after the small claims court ruled she didn't have to return it.
The former beauty queen also repeated her earlier statement that she does not remember getting married. She said she went to Las Vegas with her then-boyfriend, David Scanlan, just to visit his parents before the mid-October pageant.
Gushwa said that during that period of time she was taking prescription medication and also drinking alcohol, and that her ability to make sound decisions was affected.
"My memory of much of the evening where I was supposedly married in a Las Vegas wedding chapel is hazy at best," Gushwa said. "Those who've made statements to the contrary are ignorant of the facts or are motivated by something other than the truth."
Gushwa said she and Scanlan broke up shortly after the Las Vegas trip.
"I never even told my family that I was married . . . because I never believed or thought for one moment that I was," she said.
Her attorney said the marriage was nullified early in 2005 by the state of Nevada and that under the law, the marriage never existed.
Who keeps the crown "We're just trying to get Hilary to do the right thing and return the crown," said Sandy Bryan, executive director of the scholarship association. If the crown was indeed given to a girl who is ill, the VCSA may let her keep it, Bryan said.
"We're not trying to be mean to little girls; we just don't know the circumstances," she said.
According to Lori Barondess, who serves on the pageant committee with Youngern, said the organization, not Youngern, initiated the small claims court proceedings and filed the police report.
In addition, Youngern's daughter's role in the competition was not significantly affected by Gushwa's actions because the other woman finished third, not second.
"Only the first runnerup was directly affected, since she was not able to compete (as Miss Ventura County) in the Miss California competition because there was not enough time to prepare her," Barondess said.
Pageant organizers said they learned about the marriage the week before Gushwa was to represent the county in the state competition.
"The sister of the groom called the head of the Miss California pageant to say Gushwa was married," said Barondess, adding that she and Scanlan's mother provided photos and details of the wedding.
Youngern refused to comment for this story. An internal DA's office investigation may take place to determine whether Youngern had in any way abused her authority.
Gushwa said she does not desire revenge or retaliation. "It was our hope that Ms. Youngern would learn from her mistake as Ms. Gushwa has from hers," Bamieh said.
Gushwa began to compete in pageants at age 16, and created Heart2Heart, a nonprofit organization that promotes bone marrow drives to help leukemia patients.
She said she hoped the widely publicized allegations will not affect the group's ability to raise awareness and money for the National Marrow Donor Program.
She has been a national spokesperson for the City of Hope and earned a Volunteer of the Year award from the Moorpark Chamber of Commerce.
According to her website, Gushwa won the 2007 Miss Ventura County International pageant, an event organized by Crowning Glory Productions.
Source: Simi Valley Acorn
By Sylvie Belmond belmond@theacorn.com
Miss Ventura County 2005, who was dethroned the same year and later accused by pageant organizers of theft and perjury, fought back Friday at a press event organized by her attorney.
Hilary Gushwa, then a Moorpark resident, lost her title and the right to wear her crown when pageant officials learned she was married at the time she participated in the local competition.
Gushwa says she is the target of an "angry beauty pageant mother who is upset that her daughter lost a competition."
"I won Miss Ventura County 2005. I applied for the competition in August of 2004 and every representation I made in my application was true and accurate," Gushwa said Friday.
Records show Gushwa got married in Las Vegas on Oct. 10, 2004. The pageant took place Oct. 23, 2004.
Pageant rules dictate that entrants "must never have been married, never had a marriage annulled, or been pregnant."
The Ventura County Scholarship Association, which organizes the pageant, sued Gushwa for $5,000 in small claims court earlier this year, alleging that she knowingly and fraudulently misrepresented herself as single in order to compete. The civil court awarded the association $3,121 in July. Gushwa paid the debt.
Pageant organizers filed a police report in August, accusing Gushwa of grand theft and alleging she committed perjury during the civil trial.
In self -defense
Last week Gushwa, speaking outside her attorney's office in Ventura, refuted the allegations. Along with her attorney, Ron Bamieh, she pointed the finger at Jackie Youngern, a committee member of the Ventura County Scholarship Association.
Bamieh maintains Gushwa committed no malfeasance when she accepted the title, and said the driving force behind the allegations is Youngern, is the mother of another 2005 pageant contestant.
He alleged that Youngern used her professional credentials as an investigative assistant with the Ventura County district attorney's office to intimidate witnesses and solicit clerks at government offices to obtain records.
"It's beneath her, it should not be done," said Bamieh, who had worked on several unrelated cases with Youngern when he was employed at the DA's office.
Gushwa said her family has received disturbing phone calls and been harassed since the filing of a police report made the allegations public.
On the subject of the missing crown- actually a tiara- Gushwa said she had given it to a seriously ill young girl after the small claims court ruled she didn't have to return it.
The former beauty queen also repeated her earlier statement that she does not remember getting married. She said she went to Las Vegas with her then-boyfriend, David Scanlan, just to visit his parents before the mid-October pageant.
Gushwa said that during that period of time she was taking prescription medication and also drinking alcohol, and that her ability to make sound decisions was affected.
"My memory of much of the evening where I was supposedly married in a Las Vegas wedding chapel is hazy at best," Gushwa said. "Those who've made statements to the contrary are ignorant of the facts or are motivated by something other than the truth."
Gushwa said she and Scanlan broke up shortly after the Las Vegas trip.
"I never even told my family that I was married . . . because I never believed or thought for one moment that I was," she said.
Her attorney said the marriage was nullified early in 2005 by the state of Nevada and that under the law, the marriage never existed.
Who keeps the crown "We're just trying to get Hilary to do the right thing and return the crown," said Sandy Bryan, executive director of the scholarship association. If the crown was indeed given to a girl who is ill, the VCSA may let her keep it, Bryan said.
"We're not trying to be mean to little girls; we just don't know the circumstances," she said.
According to Lori Barondess, who serves on the pageant committee with Youngern, said the organization, not Youngern, initiated the small claims court proceedings and filed the police report.
In addition, Youngern's daughter's role in the competition was not significantly affected by Gushwa's actions because the other woman finished third, not second.
"Only the first runnerup was directly affected, since she was not able to compete (as Miss Ventura County) in the Miss California competition because there was not enough time to prepare her," Barondess said.
Pageant organizers said they learned about the marriage the week before Gushwa was to represent the county in the state competition.
"The sister of the groom called the head of the Miss California pageant to say Gushwa was married," said Barondess, adding that she and Scanlan's mother provided photos and details of the wedding.
Youngern refused to comment for this story. An internal DA's office investigation may take place to determine whether Youngern had in any way abused her authority.
Gushwa said she does not desire revenge or retaliation. "It was our hope that Ms. Youngern would learn from her mistake as Ms. Gushwa has from hers," Bamieh said.
Gushwa began to compete in pageants at age 16, and created Heart2Heart, a nonprofit organization that promotes bone marrow drives to help leukemia patients.
She said she hoped the widely publicized allegations will not affect the group's ability to raise awareness and money for the National Marrow Donor Program.
She has been a national spokesperson for the City of Hope and earned a Volunteer of the Year award from the Moorpark Chamber of Commerce.
According to her website, Gushwa won the 2007 Miss Ventura County International pageant, an event organized by Crowning Glory Productions.
Source: Simi Valley Acorn
Priyanka Chopra's father gets bail
Indore, Sep 21 : A local court today released Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra's father Ashok Chopra on a bail of Rs one lakh in connection with a case lodged by her former private secretary Prakash Jaju.
Mr Chopra appeared before Judicial Magistrate V S Mubel, who fixed September 26 as the next date for hearing.
Mr Chopra's counsel Chandrashekhar Raikwar was present in the court.
Jaju, a resident of Mhow near Indore, had lodged a police compliant that underworld don Chhota Shakeel had made threatening calls on Priyanka's behalf over a dispute related to financial dealings.
However, he moved the court when no action was taken in this regard.
Meanwhile, Priyanka and her father approached the Madhya Pradesh High Court's Indore bench seeking stay in the case. The High Court's Indore Bench had acquitted Priyanka from the charges recently.
However, a case against her father was continuing in a lower court.
Meanwhile, Priyanka had filed a case against Jaju in Mumbai.
Source: New Kerala
Mr Chopra appeared before Judicial Magistrate V S Mubel, who fixed September 26 as the next date for hearing.
Mr Chopra's counsel Chandrashekhar Raikwar was present in the court.
Jaju, a resident of Mhow near Indore, had lodged a police compliant that underworld don Chhota Shakeel had made threatening calls on Priyanka's behalf over a dispute related to financial dealings.
However, he moved the court when no action was taken in this regard.
Meanwhile, Priyanka and her father approached the Madhya Pradesh High Court's Indore bench seeking stay in the case. The High Court's Indore Bench had acquitted Priyanka from the charges recently.
However, a case against her father was continuing in a lower court.
Meanwhile, Priyanka had filed a case against Jaju in Mumbai.
Source: New Kerala
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Despite Lesbian, Drug Scandal Miss USA Tara Conner Says No Changes
By Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith
Despite the scandals that plagued her reign last year, former Miss USA Tara Conner says if she had the chance to do it all over, "I wouldn't have done anything differently." Controversy became Conner's last name after reports surfaced that she turned into a party animal, had been sneaking men into the Trump Place apartment appointed for Miss USA, was drinking underage, tested positive for cocaine, and kissed Miss Teen USA Katie Blair in public.
Despite Lesbian, Drug Charges Miss USA Tara Conner Says No Changes
Conner escaped dethronement only after Miss USA pageant owner/exec producer Donald Trump decided to give her a second chance and she entered rehab last December.
"I know it sounds crazy," says Conner of not wanting to change a thing about the past year, "but we all make mistakes. No one in this world is perfect. I can sit here and try to beat myself up about being the one who did go out too much, but all of these mistakes have formed the person I am today, who is someone I'm very proud of and have a lot of respect for."
Despite the scandals that plagued her reign last year, former Miss USA Tara Conner says if she had the chance to do it all over, "I wouldn't have done anything differently." Controversy became Conner's last name after reports surfaced that she turned into a party animal, had been sneaking men into the Trump Place apartment appointed for Miss USA, was drinking underage, tested positive for cocaine, and kissed Miss Teen USA Katie Blair in public.Despite Lesbian, Drug Charges Miss USA Tara Conner Says No Changes
Conner escaped dethronement only after Miss USA pageant owner/exec producer Donald Trump decided to give her a second chance and she entered rehab last December.
"I know it sounds crazy," says Conner of not wanting to change a thing about the past year, "but we all make mistakes. No one in this world is perfect. I can sit here and try to beat myself up about being the one who did go out too much, but all of these mistakes have formed the person I am today, who is someone I'm very proud of and have a lot of respect for."
Connor will be seen offering the benefit of her hindsight to 2007's reigning beauty queens, Miss Universe Riyo Mori, Miss USA Rachel Smith and Miss Teen USA Katie Blair, in MTV's Oct. 10-debuting reality series "Pageant Place," which chronicles what happens to a beauty queen after the win.
"I pretty much touched base on every issue you could touch base on," notes Conner, "so I'm an unofficial peer consultant there to try to keep them sane, help them look on the bright side of things and realize everything in life is temporary."
In retrospect, she says, "The crazy thing about it is that when I received the title, I didn't know what I wanted to achieve because of this disease, alcoholism, and all the 'isms' I fell into." In fact, she says now, "In no way did I think I would win and be put in this position, and when the first runner up got called, I thought, 'Oh, s---! What do I do now?' I was scared to death. I didn't realize how much went into it, how stressful it was. … I was only able to get three good sober months in as Miss USA, but it was still the best year of my life. It was the hardest year but still the best."
Source: National Ledger
Monday, September 17, 2007
Tollywood gathers to celebrate
And surprise of surprises was when Yukta Mookhey turned up at the party too.Aparna Sen (TOI Photo)
What a better way to celebrate a National Award for the Best English Feature Film than to host a party with celebrities from the film world? Aparna Sen, Konkona and Dhritiman Chatterjee sure had reasons to feel proud what with almost a big section of Kolkata’s film and television world turning up to congratulate them at a party thrown by producer Bipin Vohra at Galaxy, The Park. Of course, people did miss Shabana Azmi’s
presence at the Saturday party what with many still raving about the actor’s sterling performance in 15, Park Avenue.
And surprise of surprises was when Yukta Mookhey turned up at the party too, wearing a turquoise blue dress with stilettos that literally made her tower over everyone else.
Overheard: Is Yukta based in Kolkata these days? First she is spotted at an art exhibition, now at this party. May be, she is keeping her options of doing Tollywood films open!
Source: The Times of India
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Universal Charmer
Andrea Roche opens up to Julia Molony about her parents' split, being married and her distrust of good-looking men.
Andrea Roche seems tense. When I arrive to meet her in the bijou Dylan Hotel in Dublin 4, she has already settled in; she's all business-like and engrossed in some kind of paperwork. She has the unmistakable gilded patina of serious affluence that complements so perfectly the design concept of the hotel bar, it makes you think they should pay her to sit there.
With perfect nails, glossy hair, and extravagant curves richly upholstered by her clothes, her look matches exactly the artfully contrived elegance of the place. It's an image that can only be achieved through incessant grooming and expensive accessorising.
We find a cosy corner and begin to talk. In photographs, her precise features sometimes have a hard-bitten look, but in person, she possesses a much softer kind of beauty. I'm dying to launch into a chat about how her year-old marriage is going and to get the truth behind what appears, on the outside, to be an amusing pastiche of the hackneyed beauty-queen-meets-millionaire fairytale (more of which later), but as she seems nervous, I decide to start with something lighter.
So, we talk about her long-standing involvement in Miss Ireland -- in 10 years, she has gone from wearing the crown to becoming the owner and, indeed, the very embodiment of the competition. Her latest coup was acquiring the Irish franchise rights to the Miss Universe pageant.
She speaks slowly, in a husky drawl that is much less bogger-harsh than everyone would have you believe, although her deep tones do fairly boom through the refined hush of the room. There are one or two other lone customers scattered around, but no one else is speaking and you can tell being overheard is making Andrea uncomfortable. She is self-conscious and it shows. So, after a brief kerfuffle, we relocate to the hotel's private library.
In seclusion, Andrea instantly relaxes. The timorous manner melts rapidly into a kind of voluble, jocose banter that is the special talent of pretty, chatty girls from rural towns, who are raised to be able to verbally lampoon their brothers over the racket in the local family bar.
If Dublin high society apes an aristocratic hierarchy of wealth and prestige, then the Miss Ireland pageant is the equivalent of a Swiss finishing school, furnishing girls with the right manners and connections to make it to the top echelons of the social scene. And with Miss Ireland's transformative influence now many years behind her, it's a long time since Andrea has been stuck making wise cracks in country pubs.
This year (appropriately, the one she turns 30) represents a professional coming of age for Andrea. Her business partner of several years, Mags Humphries from the Assets modelling agency, is off to live in Australia, so Andrea is single-handedly taking over the helm of Miss Ireland. And with the Irish franchise of Miss Universe now added to her portfolio, she has already expanded this inherited empire.
It's an important time that marks her graduation from professional model to modelling professional -- a proper, stand-alone entrepreneur. It doesn't stop there. Next on her to-do list is the fulfilment of a long-standing aim to head her own agency.
As queen bee of the Irish modelling set Andrea presides serenely over a merry carnival of inconsequence. Her world is populated by pretty girls in bikinis who pose on Grafton Street and try, by buffness alone, to confer attention onto whatever product (mobile phones, ice creams, bananas) they've been hired to plug. It's a lifestyle defined by velvet-rope values and Brown Thomas tastes but, for all her famous bottle, Andrea is quite happy within its confines.
"I always knew my limits," she says, reflecting on what she has achieved so far. "I always knew that I was lucky to be a big fish in a small pond here in Ireland and that I should make the most of that. I never dreamed of going to New York or Milan and trying to compete against the most beautiful women in the world. I do admire girls who do that, but luckily, I've never had those kinds of ambitions."
This, as I'm to learn over the next couple of hours, is classic Andrea: relentless pragmatism, an unsparing self-knowledge that exposes her insecurities, and an awareness of her strengths and how to use them.
She was born and raised in Clonmel, the eldest of five children in a normal, happy household. Her siblings now all lead lives that are markedly different from hers and she admits that they all have strongly contrasting personalities. One of her sisters is a social care worker; the other is studying hotel management. Her youngest brother is about to start a computer science degree in Waterford and the older brother works in a factory in Kilkenny.
Even when she was very young that characteristic instinct for self-reliance, for mastering her surroundings, quickly became apparent. On her first day of school, she calmly told her mother to let go of her hand, walking straight inside without even looking back.
At 18, she went off to Carlow to study business. She wasn't even halfway through when she won Miss Ireland and left for good -- a decision that, for obvious reasons, she has never had cause to regret.
Thus began the giant leap from Carlow tech to Miss World stage. It was a baptism of fire for a small-town girl who had barely been out of Ireland. At the Miss Universe competition all the other contestants were decked out in designer clothes and bankrolled by rich boyfriends, but she had to borrow an evening dress from Miss India as she had brought only one gown to last her six weeks. Despite these, and other almost- cliched, gauche Irish disadvantages, she did well, coming in at fourth place.
"I was very innocent and naive when I won and learnt a lot in that year," she says.
Andrea has, in the past, described herself as a very committed person, which sounds like one of those vapid, meaningless little statements until you examine the manner in which she built her career. Her association with Newbridge began over eight years ago. She's gone from simply modelling the jewellery to becoming synonymous with the brand. Demonstrating a shrewdness so brazen it becomes almost charming, she never misses an opportunity to drop the company name. She's been equally tenacious, of course, in her approach to taking over Miss Ireland.
It didn't take Andrea long to figure out that CityWest (where she and her husband now live out the Celtic Tiger dream in all its gated-mansion glory) would not be conquered by modelling alone. Especially considering, as she has said herself in the past, it's so hard to make any real money from it.
"The best earners are the well-known girls," she says of her role in the evolution of Irish Models from mere clothes horses to schlock celebrities and household names. Making an actual living as a model in Ireland is a gruelling ascent, achieved by clinging, tooth and nail, to any opportunity, no matter how humiliating, to build up a profile. Andrea has managed the impressive feat of achieving this with dignity, relatively speaking, intact.
This is due, for the most part, to an impressive cop-on when playing the media game and an understanding of how to engage with the press. "If somebody rings you, and you've got a little story that you think would be worthwhile, you know, something positive about yourself, there's no harm in giving that," she says.
She's so media aware, in fact, that she has developed the rather odd habit of seeming to exercise her own editorial judgment as she's being interviewed. Several times during our conversation, she wonders aloud: "What else will I say?" making explicit an acute consciousness of her audience, which she knows she must nourish assiduously.
As well as that, she protects her brand by following some simple rules: she's never photographed drunk, or even with a drink in her hand. She doesn't go to launches unless she's getting paid. "I don't want my picture at the back of a magazine at the opening of an envelope." She never does anything too provocative. "I'd like people to have respect for me, and I've too much respect for my parents and PJ and myself."
She was already well established in her new life in Dublin when her parents separated eight years ago. She says it was the hardest thing that she has ever had to deal with. She's never talked about this publicly before and, in doing so, chooses her words carefully, anxious not to say anything that might hurt them. "If your parents break up when you are an adult, it's harder. You realise how human they are, that they can be just as lost as any other person," she says.
"I think my parents' break-up affected me a lot. Just the fact that there is nothing you can do about it really, except be there for them. You see somebody in a rawer state when they are hurting. I saw some of the strength I've got in my mother when it happened. I think often women cope a lot better."
She is close to both her parents and mentions particularly that, as the first-born girl, she's always been her father's pet. She talks to him on the phone for an hour every day. You get the impression, though, that this is not because she's a needy daddy's girl, but rather is an indication of how conscientiously she bears her responsibility towards her family since its nucleus collapsed.
Perhaps as a refuge from the upheaval back home, Andrea threw herself into carving a path in Dublin's fashion and media circles. She embarked on a romance with the then high-flying Jim Corr. She had just come out of a long-standing affair with an unknown DJ when they met, but in becoming Jim's girlfriend, she was firmly established as half of one of the city's celebrity power couples.
It was to be a long-term but not life-time liaison. When, after three-and-a-half years, they eventually broke up, she moved on, this time stepping out on the arm of the heir to one of Ireland's most powerful business dynasties, PJ Mansfield, son of property tycoon, Jim Mansfield.
Their marriage, which took place this time last year in Saggart, Dublin, was the society wedding of the year. The pictures were splashed across the pages of VIP and with every name worth dropping in deferential, courtly attendance, it might as well have been a coronation.
On the surface, they seem an unlikely couple; the beauty queen socialite and the rather more retiring Mansfield. The couple are rarely pictured out together and they keep their private lives away from the glare of the media that Roche is so adept at courting in her professional life.
Andrea, in her pragmatic way, considers that her marriage to Mansfield was dictated by the circumstances of what was already a rather unusual lifestyle.
"I didn't really get asked out a whole lot. Guys would think 'Oh, she'd have no interest in me'. The only guys that might have the confidence to chat to you would be people who were relatively successful."
Initially, it was PJ's nonchalance that she liked. "He didn't make much of an effort with me. I found that a bit attractive because he wasn't into the scene. He didn't care about whether I was a model or worked in a shop and he was just very normal. I'm from a small town and I can get a little bit intimidated at times by really, really sophisticated people. With time, you do realise it's really just smoke and screens. There's not a whole lot behind it."
She tackles, elegantly, tacitly, the fact that her husband, who looks sweet and pleasant, is no Colin Farrell. "A lot of the half good-looking guys I know would be womanisers around the place," she says. "You meet a lot of chancers over the years. You see a lot of people having affairs and any of the really good-looking fellas playing the field. I'm not saying I settled for . . . "
There is a pause, as she considers how to make this rather delicate point, before concluding rather vaguely, "But you'd just be glad for someone just normal." As with her career, in affairs of the heart, it seems she's happier to stick with safe, known quantities, rather than to indulge in adventurism for its own sake. I suspect she is someone who always likes to feel on top of things, always in control.
"Trust is a major thing for me," she offers as an insight into the judgement she exercised in choosing PJ for a husband. "I have a good few male friends and I know what they get up to when they go on holidays. I have so much freedom with PJ. I could say to him, 'I'm going on holidays for two weeks, you don't mind, do you?' and he'd let me. Not that I do that very often, but it's great to be myself. He's not ringing me all the time. If I'm away with friends, he's not ringing me to see where I am or who I'm talking to."
But how do they maintain a chemistry having been together so long and, especially, now that they are married?
"Both of us make an effort with our appearances," she says. "We still like to have romantic meals out and stuff. We have time to ourselves, so we are not getting too complacent."
I ask her what kind of things they fight about and she considers for a moment before saying, " He bottles up. I can't imagine how a person can't get angry at things."
Of course, this is spoken by a woman
who is well known for unleashing her furious temper -- once to spectacular effect when she was stopped for speeding (an indiscretion that earned her a further fine for verbally abusing a garda).
"I'm not a bit psycho and I'm not a moody person. But if someone does something wrong to me, then I'm not afraid to say it."
PJ, on the other hand, is much more laid- back. Andrea shrugs off the suggestion that people might have them pegged as having a stereotypically transactional relationship, where material wealth is staked in exchange for the ownership of physical beauty.
"I think people think that he's a serious, big flasho Johnny big notes -- but he's not," she says. "He works six days a week, and it's his father who's very wealthy. We have a great life and he's on a good wage, but he's not what people think."
And for those, like me, who wonder about the domestic details of their life, she kindly provides the odd bit of info that he's a bit of a DIY wizard. Could "practically build a house from scratch", apparently. Which comes as a bit of a surprise, because he doesn't look like the type you could imagine sporting a tool belt.
Andrea Roche's professional career thus far has shown her to be a consummate opportunist, but you could never call her lazy.
"I'd hate to sit at home and have to put my hand out at the end of the week. I'd hate to depend on someone else materially," she says. And since her ferocious drive so clearly stems from a pressing desire to constantly assert her independence, no one could really argue with that.
Source: Independent
Andrea Roche seems tense. When I arrive to meet her in the bijou Dylan Hotel in Dublin 4, she has already settled in; she's all business-like and engrossed in some kind of paperwork. She has the unmistakable gilded patina of serious affluence that complements so perfectly the design concept of the hotel bar, it makes you think they should pay her to sit there.
With perfect nails, glossy hair, and extravagant curves richly upholstered by her clothes, her look matches exactly the artfully contrived elegance of the place. It's an image that can only be achieved through incessant grooming and expensive accessorising.
We find a cosy corner and begin to talk. In photographs, her precise features sometimes have a hard-bitten look, but in person, she possesses a much softer kind of beauty. I'm dying to launch into a chat about how her year-old marriage is going and to get the truth behind what appears, on the outside, to be an amusing pastiche of the hackneyed beauty-queen-meets-millionaire fairytale (more of which later), but as she seems nervous, I decide to start with something lighter.
So, we talk about her long-standing involvement in Miss Ireland -- in 10 years, she has gone from wearing the crown to becoming the owner and, indeed, the very embodiment of the competition. Her latest coup was acquiring the Irish franchise rights to the Miss Universe pageant.
She speaks slowly, in a husky drawl that is much less bogger-harsh than everyone would have you believe, although her deep tones do fairly boom through the refined hush of the room. There are one or two other lone customers scattered around, but no one else is speaking and you can tell being overheard is making Andrea uncomfortable. She is self-conscious and it shows. So, after a brief kerfuffle, we relocate to the hotel's private library.
In seclusion, Andrea instantly relaxes. The timorous manner melts rapidly into a kind of voluble, jocose banter that is the special talent of pretty, chatty girls from rural towns, who are raised to be able to verbally lampoon their brothers over the racket in the local family bar.
If Dublin high society apes an aristocratic hierarchy of wealth and prestige, then the Miss Ireland pageant is the equivalent of a Swiss finishing school, furnishing girls with the right manners and connections to make it to the top echelons of the social scene. And with Miss Ireland's transformative influence now many years behind her, it's a long time since Andrea has been stuck making wise cracks in country pubs.
This year (appropriately, the one she turns 30) represents a professional coming of age for Andrea. Her business partner of several years, Mags Humphries from the Assets modelling agency, is off to live in Australia, so Andrea is single-handedly taking over the helm of Miss Ireland. And with the Irish franchise of Miss Universe now added to her portfolio, she has already expanded this inherited empire.
It's an important time that marks her graduation from professional model to modelling professional -- a proper, stand-alone entrepreneur. It doesn't stop there. Next on her to-do list is the fulfilment of a long-standing aim to head her own agency.
As queen bee of the Irish modelling set Andrea presides serenely over a merry carnival of inconsequence. Her world is populated by pretty girls in bikinis who pose on Grafton Street and try, by buffness alone, to confer attention onto whatever product (mobile phones, ice creams, bananas) they've been hired to plug. It's a lifestyle defined by velvet-rope values and Brown Thomas tastes but, for all her famous bottle, Andrea is quite happy within its confines.
"I always knew my limits," she says, reflecting on what she has achieved so far. "I always knew that I was lucky to be a big fish in a small pond here in Ireland and that I should make the most of that. I never dreamed of going to New York or Milan and trying to compete against the most beautiful women in the world. I do admire girls who do that, but luckily, I've never had those kinds of ambitions."
This, as I'm to learn over the next couple of hours, is classic Andrea: relentless pragmatism, an unsparing self-knowledge that exposes her insecurities, and an awareness of her strengths and how to use them.
She was born and raised in Clonmel, the eldest of five children in a normal, happy household. Her siblings now all lead lives that are markedly different from hers and she admits that they all have strongly contrasting personalities. One of her sisters is a social care worker; the other is studying hotel management. Her youngest brother is about to start a computer science degree in Waterford and the older brother works in a factory in Kilkenny.
Even when she was very young that characteristic instinct for self-reliance, for mastering her surroundings, quickly became apparent. On her first day of school, she calmly told her mother to let go of her hand, walking straight inside without even looking back.
At 18, she went off to Carlow to study business. She wasn't even halfway through when she won Miss Ireland and left for good -- a decision that, for obvious reasons, she has never had cause to regret.
Thus began the giant leap from Carlow tech to Miss World stage. It was a baptism of fire for a small-town girl who had barely been out of Ireland. At the Miss Universe competition all the other contestants were decked out in designer clothes and bankrolled by rich boyfriends, but she had to borrow an evening dress from Miss India as she had brought only one gown to last her six weeks. Despite these, and other almost- cliched, gauche Irish disadvantages, she did well, coming in at fourth place.
"I was very innocent and naive when I won and learnt a lot in that year," she says.
Andrea has, in the past, described herself as a very committed person, which sounds like one of those vapid, meaningless little statements until you examine the manner in which she built her career. Her association with Newbridge began over eight years ago. She's gone from simply modelling the jewellery to becoming synonymous with the brand. Demonstrating a shrewdness so brazen it becomes almost charming, she never misses an opportunity to drop the company name. She's been equally tenacious, of course, in her approach to taking over Miss Ireland.
It didn't take Andrea long to figure out that CityWest (where she and her husband now live out the Celtic Tiger dream in all its gated-mansion glory) would not be conquered by modelling alone. Especially considering, as she has said herself in the past, it's so hard to make any real money from it.
"The best earners are the well-known girls," she says of her role in the evolution of Irish Models from mere clothes horses to schlock celebrities and household names. Making an actual living as a model in Ireland is a gruelling ascent, achieved by clinging, tooth and nail, to any opportunity, no matter how humiliating, to build up a profile. Andrea has managed the impressive feat of achieving this with dignity, relatively speaking, intact.
This is due, for the most part, to an impressive cop-on when playing the media game and an understanding of how to engage with the press. "If somebody rings you, and you've got a little story that you think would be worthwhile, you know, something positive about yourself, there's no harm in giving that," she says.
She's so media aware, in fact, that she has developed the rather odd habit of seeming to exercise her own editorial judgment as she's being interviewed. Several times during our conversation, she wonders aloud: "What else will I say?" making explicit an acute consciousness of her audience, which she knows she must nourish assiduously.
As well as that, she protects her brand by following some simple rules: she's never photographed drunk, or even with a drink in her hand. She doesn't go to launches unless she's getting paid. "I don't want my picture at the back of a magazine at the opening of an envelope." She never does anything too provocative. "I'd like people to have respect for me, and I've too much respect for my parents and PJ and myself."
She was already well established in her new life in Dublin when her parents separated eight years ago. She says it was the hardest thing that she has ever had to deal with. She's never talked about this publicly before and, in doing so, chooses her words carefully, anxious not to say anything that might hurt them. "If your parents break up when you are an adult, it's harder. You realise how human they are, that they can be just as lost as any other person," she says.
"I think my parents' break-up affected me a lot. Just the fact that there is nothing you can do about it really, except be there for them. You see somebody in a rawer state when they are hurting. I saw some of the strength I've got in my mother when it happened. I think often women cope a lot better."
She is close to both her parents and mentions particularly that, as the first-born girl, she's always been her father's pet. She talks to him on the phone for an hour every day. You get the impression, though, that this is not because she's a needy daddy's girl, but rather is an indication of how conscientiously she bears her responsibility towards her family since its nucleus collapsed.
Perhaps as a refuge from the upheaval back home, Andrea threw herself into carving a path in Dublin's fashion and media circles. She embarked on a romance with the then high-flying Jim Corr. She had just come out of a long-standing affair with an unknown DJ when they met, but in becoming Jim's girlfriend, she was firmly established as half of one of the city's celebrity power couples.
It was to be a long-term but not life-time liaison. When, after three-and-a-half years, they eventually broke up, she moved on, this time stepping out on the arm of the heir to one of Ireland's most powerful business dynasties, PJ Mansfield, son of property tycoon, Jim Mansfield.
Their marriage, which took place this time last year in Saggart, Dublin, was the society wedding of the year. The pictures were splashed across the pages of VIP and with every name worth dropping in deferential, courtly attendance, it might as well have been a coronation.
On the surface, they seem an unlikely couple; the beauty queen socialite and the rather more retiring Mansfield. The couple are rarely pictured out together and they keep their private lives away from the glare of the media that Roche is so adept at courting in her professional life.
Andrea, in her pragmatic way, considers that her marriage to Mansfield was dictated by the circumstances of what was already a rather unusual lifestyle.
"I didn't really get asked out a whole lot. Guys would think 'Oh, she'd have no interest in me'. The only guys that might have the confidence to chat to you would be people who were relatively successful."
Initially, it was PJ's nonchalance that she liked. "He didn't make much of an effort with me. I found that a bit attractive because he wasn't into the scene. He didn't care about whether I was a model or worked in a shop and he was just very normal. I'm from a small town and I can get a little bit intimidated at times by really, really sophisticated people. With time, you do realise it's really just smoke and screens. There's not a whole lot behind it."
She tackles, elegantly, tacitly, the fact that her husband, who looks sweet and pleasant, is no Colin Farrell. "A lot of the half good-looking guys I know would be womanisers around the place," she says. "You meet a lot of chancers over the years. You see a lot of people having affairs and any of the really good-looking fellas playing the field. I'm not saying I settled for . . . "
There is a pause, as she considers how to make this rather delicate point, before concluding rather vaguely, "But you'd just be glad for someone just normal." As with her career, in affairs of the heart, it seems she's happier to stick with safe, known quantities, rather than to indulge in adventurism for its own sake. I suspect she is someone who always likes to feel on top of things, always in control.
"Trust is a major thing for me," she offers as an insight into the judgement she exercised in choosing PJ for a husband. "I have a good few male friends and I know what they get up to when they go on holidays. I have so much freedom with PJ. I could say to him, 'I'm going on holidays for two weeks, you don't mind, do you?' and he'd let me. Not that I do that very often, but it's great to be myself. He's not ringing me all the time. If I'm away with friends, he's not ringing me to see where I am or who I'm talking to."
But how do they maintain a chemistry having been together so long and, especially, now that they are married?
"Both of us make an effort with our appearances," she says. "We still like to have romantic meals out and stuff. We have time to ourselves, so we are not getting too complacent."
I ask her what kind of things they fight about and she considers for a moment before saying, " He bottles up. I can't imagine how a person can't get angry at things."
Of course, this is spoken by a woman
who is well known for unleashing her furious temper -- once to spectacular effect when she was stopped for speeding (an indiscretion that earned her a further fine for verbally abusing a garda).
"I'm not a bit psycho and I'm not a moody person. But if someone does something wrong to me, then I'm not afraid to say it."
PJ, on the other hand, is much more laid- back. Andrea shrugs off the suggestion that people might have them pegged as having a stereotypically transactional relationship, where material wealth is staked in exchange for the ownership of physical beauty.
"I think people think that he's a serious, big flasho Johnny big notes -- but he's not," she says. "He works six days a week, and it's his father who's very wealthy. We have a great life and he's on a good wage, but he's not what people think."
And for those, like me, who wonder about the domestic details of their life, she kindly provides the odd bit of info that he's a bit of a DIY wizard. Could "practically build a house from scratch", apparently. Which comes as a bit of a surprise, because he doesn't look like the type you could imagine sporting a tool belt.
Andrea Roche's professional career thus far has shown her to be a consummate opportunist, but you could never call her lazy.
"I'd hate to sit at home and have to put my hand out at the end of the week. I'd hate to depend on someone else materially," she says. And since her ferocious drive so clearly stems from a pressing desire to constantly assert her independence, no one could really argue with that.
Source: Independent
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Ex-secretary moves SC against Priyanka Chopra
Priyanka Chopra’s private secretary has filed a petition in the SC challenging the star’s discharge by the Madhya Pradesh HC. (AP Photo)NEW DELHI: Prakash Jaju, the estranged private secretary of Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra, has filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging her discharge by the Madhya Pradesh High Court in a criminal intimidation case filed by him.
In the special leave petition filed through counsel Abhijit Sengupta and Anand Dey, the petitioner submitted that the High Court had erroneously discharged the actress of criminal intimidation charges while acknowleding the same against her father Ashok Chopra and underworld don Chhota Shakeel.
Jaju had filed a case of criminal intimidation in January this year before a magistrate in Mhow, Madhya Pradesh against Priyanka, Ashok Chopra and Chhota Shakeel after the actress and her father allegedly used the services of the don to intimidate him in a financial dispute.
According to Jaju, the don at the behest of the Chopras called him up from Malayasia and threated to eliminate him if he failed to withdraw the civil suit filed by him against the actress.
The suit filed two years ago related to arrears to the tune of more than Rs 1 crore due to Jaju from Priyanka.
Following the threat, Jaju filed a case of criminal intimidation before a magistrate in Mhow who took cognizance of the complaint and framed charges under IPC sections 506 IPC (criminal intimidation) and 34 (common intention).
However, the Chopras moved the Madhya Pradesh High Court which while approving the charges framed against Shakeel and Ashok Chopra, discharged Priyanka of the charges on the ground that no case was made against her.
Incidentally, Priyanka had last week filed a caveat before the apex court pleading that she should be heard before any orders are passed on the SLP sought to be filed by Jaju.
Source: The Times of India
Venezuela pageant attack
Minutes after Miss Venezuela 2007 was crowned, a young man attacked one of the runners-upMinutes after a 21-year-old from the state of Amazonas was enthroned Miss Venezuela 2007, a young man from the live audience took to the stage and attacked one of the runners-up.
28 Venezuelan women lit up the stage at the Miss Venezuela contest but it took just one man to steal the show. Just minutes after a 21-year old from the state of Amazonas was crowned Miss Venezuela, a very eager fan jumped out from the live audience, and attacked one of the runners-up and snatched her crown.
He then tried to sit down on the winner's throne but was stopped by the security. As he was escorted away, the man said he wanted the crown for his state of Zulia.
This surely was one crowning moment, that no one will forget.
Source: Times Now
Friday, September 14, 2007
New Venezuelan Queens
Miss Amazonas Dayana Mendoza, a 21-year old professional model and student from Caracas, won on September 13th the title of Miss Venezuela 2007, after beating 27 other aspirants for the coveted title.Mendoza, who stands 1.76 m tall, will represent Venezuela at the Miss Universe 2008 pageant to be held possibly in Vietnam.
Crowned as Miss World Venezuela was 21-year old Hannelys Quintero, Miss Cojedes. Quintero is 1.76 m tall and is currently pursuing a degree in Psycholgy. She will represent Venezuela at the Miss World 2008 contest.
Miss Venezuela International is 20-year old Dayana Colmenares, from Valencia. The 1.75 m student of Marketing will travel to China to compete for the Miss International 2008 title.
Misses Aragua and Tachira were the 1st and 2nd runners-up, respectively.
Completing the Top 10, where the delegates from Trujillo, Sucre, Barinas, Vargas and Miranda.
Miss Cojedes also won the Miss Photogenic title, while Miss Aragua was chosen Miss Internet.
Notable former beauty queens were among the judges, including reigning Miss International Daniela Di Giacomo; E! Latin America main anchor Daniela Kosan; Carmen Maria Montiel, Miss Venezuela 1984; Anarella Bono, Miss Anzoategui 1997; and Nacarit Molina, noted for being one of the winners in the Miss Tachira 2006 pageant, who lost her arm in a tragic accident while she was in route to one of the main castings in Caracas.The event, which took place for about 4 hours, was telecast live to the country. The transmission ended abruptly when a deranged pageant fan (right) climbed up on stage and took the crown away from Quintero (Miss World Venezuela). The psycho fan put the crown over his head and started waving to the crowd. He was then taken away by security.
Source: Global Beauties
Miss Bulgaria Universe 2007 Naked for Maxim Magazine
By Blaga BangievaThe sexy brunette from the cover of the last edition of ‘Maxim' men magazine is the 20 years-old Gergana Kochanova from Sofia.
She presented Bulgaria with dignity on the World finals of ‘Miss Universe' competition that took place in Mexico.
Other hot girls that are in the maxim's issue are: Galina Gancheva - Miss Bulgaria Universe 2005, the long-leg beauty from Sofia Biliana and the Brazil top model Roberta.
Source: Web Media Group
Jen Hawkins' contract dilemma
SHE'S proved herself a polished performer on the fashion circuit, looking catwalk-ready as she jetted back into Sydney from a national tour of duty for her retail bosses Myer this week.But just where Jennifer Hawkins will touch down on the television tarmac next is the multi-million dollar question facing the beauty right now.
Reps for the Channel 7 favourite have been in contract negotiations with the network which made her a star, with insiders claiming a decision on her future is expected as early as next week.
While Seven gave her a start on the box, the former Miss Universe has set her sights beyond her presenting role on travel show, The Great Outdoors, rejecting the idea of moving to a similar slot on rival Channel 9's Getaway as "tacky".
Nine held preliminary talks with Hawkins' manager Sean Anderson last month before the pair are believed to have sat down to crunch numbers.
Source: The Daily Telegraph
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Priyanka Chopra approaches SC on row with ex-secretary
The dispute related to a payment of Rs 1.37 crore which her secretary claimed the actress owed to him . (TOI Photo)NEW DELHI: Apprehending that her former private secretary P Jaju might appeal against her acquittal in the criminal intimidation case, Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra has urged the Supreme Court not to pass any orders without hearing her.
The actress made the plea in a caveat application filed through counsel P Narasimhan, but kept it under wraps for inexplicable reasons.
Though no official information was coming forth from the actress' side, it was stated that the actress had filed the caveat against the special leave petition (SLP) sought to be filed by Jaju against her acquittal by the Madhya Pradesh High Court.
An Indore Bench of the High Court had recently acquitted the actress of the criminal intimidation charges levelled against her by Jaju, who alleged that Priyanka and her father Ashok Chopra, got him threatened with dire consequences through underworld don Chhota Shakeel over a financial dispute.
The dispute related to a payment of Rs 1.37 crore which Jaju claimed the actress owed to him; a figure disputed by Priyanka.
Following her acquittal by the High Court, Jaju decided to file an SLP in the apex court, prompting the actress to file a caveat.
Speaking to PTI, Narasimhan admitted that the caveat has been filed but expressed inability to give any details on the matter.
Her Supreme Court counsel Sudarsan Rajan also declined to give any information on the issue on the ground that he was under strict instructions not to speak to the media on the issue.
Source: The Times of India
Monday, September 3, 2007
Richa Adhia’s coronation draws mixed reactions
By Abdallah Msuya
RICHA Adhia was announced Vodacom Miss Tanzania 2007 on Saturday night, drawing mixed reactions from the audiences as some cheered, while others muttered words of disproval.
The 19-year-old led a clean sweep of the top three positions for the Dar es Salaam beauty queens. Lilian Abel from Kinondoni finished second, while Queen David from Temeke finished third.
But the judges’ decision in everything is final, and Richa will therefore fly the Tanzanian flag at the Miss World beauty pageant later this year in China.
She received the crown together with a brand new RAV 4 car worth 45m/- and 8m/- cheque.
Richa particularly impressed the panel of judges, led by Miss World 2001 Agbani Darego, with her confidence and articulate answers to questions.
Richa, who was dressed in white long dress, was asked about her favourite colour to which she responded ‘white’, explaining that the colour symbolized peace and cleanness for her.
After the Q&A session, which involved the best five, and colourful performance by the THT group, Miss World 2001 Agbani Darego, who was the chief judge, stepped forward to announce the winner.
“Vodacom Miss Tanzania 2007 is contestant number 6, Richa Adhia!” the Nigerian beauty queen announced, attracting cheers and murmurs.
The nervous Adhia stepped forward to thank hundreds of fans packed in the Leaders Club grounds before replacing Wema Sepetu from the Queen’s chair.
Some fans gave her a cold shoulder but many others who don’t consider race as an attribute for winning Miss Tanzania, cheered the new queen.
Members of the jury were Agbani Darego (chairperson), Prashanti Patel, Jacqueline Ntuyabaliwe, Irene Madeje, Sophia Dianaku, Salum Kombo, Leons Mtauna, David Minja, Christian Masiaga and coordinator of the judges, Ramesh Shah.
Source: Sunday News
RICHA Adhia was announced Vodacom Miss Tanzania 2007 on Saturday night, drawing mixed reactions from the audiences as some cheered, while others muttered words of disproval.The 19-year-old led a clean sweep of the top three positions for the Dar es Salaam beauty queens. Lilian Abel from Kinondoni finished second, while Queen David from Temeke finished third.
But the judges’ decision in everything is final, and Richa will therefore fly the Tanzanian flag at the Miss World beauty pageant later this year in China.
She received the crown together with a brand new RAV 4 car worth 45m/- and 8m/- cheque.
Richa particularly impressed the panel of judges, led by Miss World 2001 Agbani Darego, with her confidence and articulate answers to questions.
Richa, who was dressed in white long dress, was asked about her favourite colour to which she responded ‘white’, explaining that the colour symbolized peace and cleanness for her.
After the Q&A session, which involved the best five, and colourful performance by the THT group, Miss World 2001 Agbani Darego, who was the chief judge, stepped forward to announce the winner.
“Vodacom Miss Tanzania 2007 is contestant number 6, Richa Adhia!” the Nigerian beauty queen announced, attracting cheers and murmurs.
The nervous Adhia stepped forward to thank hundreds of fans packed in the Leaders Club grounds before replacing Wema Sepetu from the Queen’s chair.
Some fans gave her a cold shoulder but many others who don’t consider race as an attribute for winning Miss Tanzania, cheered the new queen.
Members of the jury were Agbani Darego (chairperson), Prashanti Patel, Jacqueline Ntuyabaliwe, Irene Madeje, Sophia Dianaku, Salum Kombo, Leons Mtauna, David Minja, Christian Masiaga and coordinator of the judges, Ramesh Shah.
Source: Sunday News
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
To Miss Universe —and beyond!
By Anna Theresa Licaros
MY most distinct memory of the Miss Universe pageant this year was of Miss France holding a cheeseburger served us at Hard Rock Café Mexico. Holding half a burger with her delicate fingers, she looked at me and said: “Ye know, Tu-ress, ze first thing I learn to zay in eve-ree langu-egh is ze word, hamburger.”
I looked at her, nodded and bit into my burger. I was so hungry after all that walking up and down the Basque de Chapultepec in four-inch heels. It’s not easy being a beauty queen. Try fitting a mirror, lipstick, lip gloss, face powder and extra eyelash glue into a tote and carrying it around with poise while negotiating palatial staircases in your heels and miniskirt. Every day was a marathon for us at Miss U.
Meanwhile, Miss France continued her train of thought: “Like here in Mexico… zey call it hamburguesa. What about you, Tu-ress? What do zey call it in ze Philippines?” I was taken aback. I’m a pretty articulate person with above average capacity for witty retorts, but in this pageant, all sorts of questions were hurled at me from nowhere!
It was like the question and answer portion, only worse: they were mostly everyday stuff about me and my country that I never really thought about before joining the pageant. I tried to buy some time by sipping my Coke light, sin hielo (without ice), lest I find myself running to the loo every five minutes. I struggled for the Filipino word for hamburger: Ham-barger?
Oops, too late. Someone mentioned another topic and the conversation shifted. Ham-barger, it was. I reeled at the thought of how this might affect how the Philippines is perceived by the next person Miss France meets if she repeats this conversation. That was my everyday reality as Miss Philippines in the Miss Universe pageant. I ceased to be just Theresa or Tu-ress to Rachel/Miss France. I became the Philippines.
Early on, I became aware of what representing my country really means. Having to wear the banner “Philippines” across my breast every single day kept me on my toes, careful of how I’ve been projecting myself and everything I say or do. To some extent it was scary, but also a source of pride. Every smile I flashed, each pose I struck was with the thought that it should be my best because this wasn’t just about me anymore.
For the most part, the other contestants were fantastic. Contrary to popular belief that women who join beauty pageants are airheads or bimbos, most are college graduates with full time jobs in their own countries. They are opinionated and know what they want.
When I came back from Mexico, I was always asked if acts of sabotage really took place during the pageant. (Reportedly the most controversial in years, the 2007 Miss Universe pageant saw Miss USA being booed by some Mexicans unhappy over a pending immigration bill in the US; Miss Sweden pulling out after complaints in her country described the contest as degrading to women; and Miss Mexico being asked to change costumes because the original was deemed in poor taste.—Ed.)
I’m happy to report that I didn’t experience any such incident firsthand. The closest thing to intrigue that I encountered was a remark from a fellow candidate, perhaps meant to psych me out. During one rehearsal, I was called onstage to do the evening gown pattern, after which I had to look at the camera and pose. Suddenly, everyone was clapping and cheering. I must have done something right, I thought.
Indeed, when I got off stage, Miss Tanzania approached me, saying “Girl, that was an amazing face!” Most everyone thought so, except for Miss Bolivia who told me flat out: “You look dead onstage. Your eyes are just blank. Maybe you should, like, move your eyebrows or something.” Just friendly advice, she said, because she wanted me to do well. That was odd, I told her; another candidate had just told me the exact opposite. Miss Bolivia simply rolled her eyes and said I should trust her instead. Well, I thought afterwards, when you do something significant, you’ll get both good and bad reactions.
As an insider, I also learned that the Miss Universe organizers and production team wanted to veer away from the traditional pageant look and feel. They discouraged stiff and exaggerated posturing and encouraged sexy, relaxed, fluid and model-like movements. A Miss Universe, said our catwalk teacher, Lu Sierra, must know how to smile. She hated it when the contestants sported sexy I’m-gonna-eat-you-alive looks. The pageant organizers had a “look” in mind and I was personally sold on the subtle but sexy model’s stance they advocated.
There were so many things to learn and it wasn’t always smooth sailing. There were really days when I just wanted to put a paper bag over my head and not wear any makeup. I had to keep telling myself that I was in Mexico to do a job and that the job requires me to put on makeup at five in the morning. So I’d just shake off whatever negative feelings I felt, play some dance music and sing along while putting on my pageant face. That was how I got through the doldrums.
Apparently, I did that so well that some contestants would ask me to close my eyes so they could check out my eye makeup. They said they liked the way I blended the colors. One photographer even took a photo of my right eye. Just my right eye! He said it looked so beautiful that he wanted a shot of it. My thanks go to Jay Lozada, Allen Rosales, Lia Ramos and Jenny Tan for selflessly sharing their makeup tips with me.
That kind of team work, of collaboration, also defined my Miss Universe experience. There were so many teachers who shared their knowledge with me, as well as family and friends who flew all the way to Mexico to become my cheering squad and support group. I got a lot of joshing when I gave my guest list: 25 people strong. Not bad for a Pacific islander who lives roughly 12 time zones away.
It was the kind of support that others could only envy. My roomie, Miss Thailand, wanted to “borrow” a brother because she didn’t have any family around during the pageant. I gladly obliged, telling the bunso (youngest) in our family to go wild when Thailand gets called. I think he did go wild —for all the girls—so that was substantial compliance.
The reality of representing one’s country can be daunting, but it also enhanced me as a person. While it might have been a source of insecurity to pose beside Barbie look-alikes, it boosted my confidence nonetheless. I looked at them and felt I deserved to be there. Cheesy, I know, but when I stood there in high heels beside the most beautiful women in the universe, something changed. I was no longer a passive participant to whom things happen; instead, I chose to embrace the experience and learn from it. That made all the difference for me.
More than just another beauty pageant, this year’s Miss U put things into perspective for me. In a nutshell, my 30 days in Mexico with 76 other women from all over the world was a crash course in culture, diplomacy, confidence, and worst of all, geography. I’ll always remember— with amusement tinged with shame—how I had managed to put so many countries in the wrong continent and historical era and unwittingly displayed such ignorance by asking the delegate about it.
So, I asked Miss Egypt, “You’re from Cairo. How are the pyramids?” She smiled and giggled: “They’re in Giza.” Getting my witty retort mode back, I countered: “Well, maybe if you’d take me around the Middle East one of these days, it won’t be so confusing.” As she wiped her fingers on a tissue, Miss France interjected: “Isn’t Egypt in Africa?”
Licaros is a junior at the UP College of Law. She plans to visit Egypt and see the pyramids next summer, and find out how they say “hamburger” in Arabic.
Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer
MY most distinct memory of the Miss Universe pageant this year was of Miss France holding a cheeseburger served us at Hard Rock Café Mexico. Holding half a burger with her delicate fingers, she looked at me and said: “Ye know, Tu-ress, ze first thing I learn to zay in eve-ree langu-egh is ze word, hamburger.”I looked at her, nodded and bit into my burger. I was so hungry after all that walking up and down the Basque de Chapultepec in four-inch heels. It’s not easy being a beauty queen. Try fitting a mirror, lipstick, lip gloss, face powder and extra eyelash glue into a tote and carrying it around with poise while negotiating palatial staircases in your heels and miniskirt. Every day was a marathon for us at Miss U.
Meanwhile, Miss France continued her train of thought: “Like here in Mexico… zey call it hamburguesa. What about you, Tu-ress? What do zey call it in ze Philippines?” I was taken aback. I’m a pretty articulate person with above average capacity for witty retorts, but in this pageant, all sorts of questions were hurled at me from nowhere!
It was like the question and answer portion, only worse: they were mostly everyday stuff about me and my country that I never really thought about before joining the pageant. I tried to buy some time by sipping my Coke light, sin hielo (without ice), lest I find myself running to the loo every five minutes. I struggled for the Filipino word for hamburger: Ham-barger?
Oops, too late. Someone mentioned another topic and the conversation shifted. Ham-barger, it was. I reeled at the thought of how this might affect how the Philippines is perceived by the next person Miss France meets if she repeats this conversation. That was my everyday reality as Miss Philippines in the Miss Universe pageant. I ceased to be just Theresa or Tu-ress to Rachel/Miss France. I became the Philippines.
Early on, I became aware of what representing my country really means. Having to wear the banner “Philippines” across my breast every single day kept me on my toes, careful of how I’ve been projecting myself and everything I say or do. To some extent it was scary, but also a source of pride. Every smile I flashed, each pose I struck was with the thought that it should be my best because this wasn’t just about me anymore.
For the most part, the other contestants were fantastic. Contrary to popular belief that women who join beauty pageants are airheads or bimbos, most are college graduates with full time jobs in their own countries. They are opinionated and know what they want.
When I came back from Mexico, I was always asked if acts of sabotage really took place during the pageant. (Reportedly the most controversial in years, the 2007 Miss Universe pageant saw Miss USA being booed by some Mexicans unhappy over a pending immigration bill in the US; Miss Sweden pulling out after complaints in her country described the contest as degrading to women; and Miss Mexico being asked to change costumes because the original was deemed in poor taste.—Ed.)
I’m happy to report that I didn’t experience any such incident firsthand. The closest thing to intrigue that I encountered was a remark from a fellow candidate, perhaps meant to psych me out. During one rehearsal, I was called onstage to do the evening gown pattern, after which I had to look at the camera and pose. Suddenly, everyone was clapping and cheering. I must have done something right, I thought.
Indeed, when I got off stage, Miss Tanzania approached me, saying “Girl, that was an amazing face!” Most everyone thought so, except for Miss Bolivia who told me flat out: “You look dead onstage. Your eyes are just blank. Maybe you should, like, move your eyebrows or something.” Just friendly advice, she said, because she wanted me to do well. That was odd, I told her; another candidate had just told me the exact opposite. Miss Bolivia simply rolled her eyes and said I should trust her instead. Well, I thought afterwards, when you do something significant, you’ll get both good and bad reactions.
As an insider, I also learned that the Miss Universe organizers and production team wanted to veer away from the traditional pageant look and feel. They discouraged stiff and exaggerated posturing and encouraged sexy, relaxed, fluid and model-like movements. A Miss Universe, said our catwalk teacher, Lu Sierra, must know how to smile. She hated it when the contestants sported sexy I’m-gonna-eat-you-alive looks. The pageant organizers had a “look” in mind and I was personally sold on the subtle but sexy model’s stance they advocated.
There were so many things to learn and it wasn’t always smooth sailing. There were really days when I just wanted to put a paper bag over my head and not wear any makeup. I had to keep telling myself that I was in Mexico to do a job and that the job requires me to put on makeup at five in the morning. So I’d just shake off whatever negative feelings I felt, play some dance music and sing along while putting on my pageant face. That was how I got through the doldrums.
Apparently, I did that so well that some contestants would ask me to close my eyes so they could check out my eye makeup. They said they liked the way I blended the colors. One photographer even took a photo of my right eye. Just my right eye! He said it looked so beautiful that he wanted a shot of it. My thanks go to Jay Lozada, Allen Rosales, Lia Ramos and Jenny Tan for selflessly sharing their makeup tips with me.
That kind of team work, of collaboration, also defined my Miss Universe experience. There were so many teachers who shared their knowledge with me, as well as family and friends who flew all the way to Mexico to become my cheering squad and support group. I got a lot of joshing when I gave my guest list: 25 people strong. Not bad for a Pacific islander who lives roughly 12 time zones away.
It was the kind of support that others could only envy. My roomie, Miss Thailand, wanted to “borrow” a brother because she didn’t have any family around during the pageant. I gladly obliged, telling the bunso (youngest) in our family to go wild when Thailand gets called. I think he did go wild —for all the girls—so that was substantial compliance.
The reality of representing one’s country can be daunting, but it also enhanced me as a person. While it might have been a source of insecurity to pose beside Barbie look-alikes, it boosted my confidence nonetheless. I looked at them and felt I deserved to be there. Cheesy, I know, but when I stood there in high heels beside the most beautiful women in the universe, something changed. I was no longer a passive participant to whom things happen; instead, I chose to embrace the experience and learn from it. That made all the difference for me.
More than just another beauty pageant, this year’s Miss U put things into perspective for me. In a nutshell, my 30 days in Mexico with 76 other women from all over the world was a crash course in culture, diplomacy, confidence, and worst of all, geography. I’ll always remember— with amusement tinged with shame—how I had managed to put so many countries in the wrong continent and historical era and unwittingly displayed such ignorance by asking the delegate about it.
So, I asked Miss Egypt, “You’re from Cairo. How are the pyramids?” She smiled and giggled: “They’re in Giza.” Getting my witty retort mode back, I countered: “Well, maybe if you’d take me around the Middle East one of these days, it won’t be so confusing.” As she wiped her fingers on a tissue, Miss France interjected: “Isn’t Egypt in Africa?”
Licaros is a junior at the UP College of Law. She plans to visit Egypt and see the pyramids next summer, and find out how they say “hamburger” in Arabic.
Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Warrant against Priyanka's dad
BHOPAL: An Indore court on Monday issued an arrest warrant against actor Priyanka Chopra's father, Ashok Chopra, after he failed to appear before it in connection with a criminal case on August 18.
Judge U S Mogal had asked Ashok to appear before it for intimidating Prakash Jaju, Priyanka's former secretary. The case was registered in May last year after Jaju alleged that he was receiving life threats from the underworld after he asked Priyanka for Rs 1.36 crore due to him.
Jaju had alleged he was getting threat calls from Karachi-based ganglord Chhota Shakeel at the behest of the actor and her father.
Defence lawyer Chandrasekhar Raekwair had appealed to the court saying Ashok Chopra was suffering from liver cancer and hence and should be excused from appearing before the district sessions court.
Source: The Times of India
Judge U S Mogal had asked Ashok to appear before it for intimidating Prakash Jaju, Priyanka's former secretary. The case was registered in May last year after Jaju alleged that he was receiving life threats from the underworld after he asked Priyanka for Rs 1.36 crore due to him.
Jaju had alleged he was getting threat calls from Karachi-based ganglord Chhota Shakeel at the behest of the actor and her father.
Defence lawyer Chandrasekhar Raekwair had appealed to the court saying Ashok Chopra was suffering from liver cancer and hence and should be excused from appearing before the district sessions court.
Source: The Times of India
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
