Dayana Mendoza was crowned Miss Universe, in a pageant dominated by Latin beauties. The 22-year-old girl was one of the favorites early on in the beauty contest, held in Vietnam.
Dayana proved her sense of humor while answering gracefully to her question regarding men having it easier in life. She replied,
“men think that the best way to reach a point is a straight line, but we women take some curves and detours to fix everything right”.
As history repeated itself, Miss USA fell during the night gown competition, just as it happened to last years contestant, Rachel Smith, during the 2007 Miss Universe pageant held in Mexico City.
Crystle Stewart quickly stood up, applauded along with the audience and with a smile, continued to model as it nothing had happened.
The Top 10 Contestants:
* Miss Venezuela Dayana Mendoza
* Miss USA Cyrstle Steward
* Miss Italy Claudia Ferraris
* Miss Russia Vera Krasova
* Miss Dominican Republic Marianne Cruz
* Miss Kosovo Zana Krasniqi
* Miss Australia Laura Dundovic
* Miss Spain Claudia Moro
* Miss Mexico Elisa Najera
* Miss Columbia Taliana Vargas
How bizarre is it, that for two years in a row our contestant falls down. I bet Donald Trump is involved somehow.
Crystle Stewart, a 26-year-old entrepreneur from Texas, was named Miss USA on Friday, beating 50 other beauty queens for the coveted crown.
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Stewart, of Missouri City, Texas, runs a party-planning and motivational speaking company, as well as modeling professionally. She says she wants to dedicate her life to international philanthropy.
“I want to talk to people about how to set a goal and achieve it,” she told The Associated Press after the show. “Because I just achieved my goal.”
Stewart edged out first runner-up Leah Laviano of Mississippi and Tiffany Andrade of New Jersey.
Miss USA 2007 Rachel Smith relinquished the crown — and the posh New York apartment that comes with it — in a show aired live by NBC with hosts Donny and Marie Osmond from the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The network co-owns the parent Miss Universe Organization with Donald Trump.
Smith, a former Miss Tennessee USA, said she was headed to Hollywood.
Stewart was headed for the publicity circuit. She said she was eager to travel and spread her message of self-improvement to young women. She noted she was one of only a handful of black woman crowned Miss USA in the pageant’s 57-year history.
“I think the United States is coming together,” she said, citing the historic presidential candidacies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. She declined to name her preference.
“I don’t know, we’ll see. Fundamentally, I’m a Democrat,” she said.
Contestants from all 50 states and the District of Columbia have been in Las Vegas for nearly three weeks, rehearsing and hyping the 57th annual pageant. After stints in Baltimore and Los Angeles, organizers billed the new venue as a city beloved by the event’s international audience.
The pageant tried to showed off its edge, featuring a grinding live rock performance by the band Finger Eleven, music from Rihanna, and contestants in barely there black bikinis and faux-fur coats.
Donny and Marie kept up a steady stream of sibling banter even while swiftly whittling the field.
Donny Osmond told the losers to “put on a poker face” as he sent them home.
“Or use Botox; then it won’t move,” Marie quipped.
Stewart will compete in the Miss Universe pageant in Vietnam in July. She also becomes a spokeswoman for breast and ovarian cancer awareness and other causes, while traveling to promote the organization.
The Miss USA people are getting rid of Tara Conner, after all. No, she’s not being fired–her time is up.
The Miss USA pageant gears up to name a new queen this week in a live televised competition that organizers say will spotlight how reigning titleholder Tara Conner nearly lost her crown and ended up in rehab. “Certainly, our reigning Miss USA is going to be on television and we’re certainly not going to shy away from referring to what happened,” executive producer Phil Gurin told The Associated Press on Monday. “Why shy away from what’s part of our family? We embrace our family.”
While not a centerpiece of the show, Conner will be “all over our telecast,” Gurin added. Viewers will be able to see Conner and “make their own determinations by seeing how she presents herself, what she has to say about what happened this past year … and that’s something we’ve never been able to do before.”
Published accounts last fall suggested that Conner, a native of Kentucky, was boozing it up at New York clubs — not exactly the kind of public behavior expected of a role model tapped to be Miss USA and then represent the United States in the
Miss Universe pageant.
The behavior of other Miss USA contestants over the last few months also drew unwanted public scrutiny: Miss Nevada USA Katie Rees lost her title after racy pictures of her surfaced on the Internet, and Miss New Jersey USA Ashley Harder resigned when she got pregnant.
Conner hung on to her crown after Donald Trump, who owns the Miss Universe and Miss USA contests in a partnership with NBC, decided to give her a second chance. She underwent a stint in rehab in Pennsylvania for her drinking. Trump’s decision sparked a war of words between The Donald and “The View” co-host
Rosie O’Donnell.
On Monday, 51 contestants representing all the states and the District of Columbia participated in a non-televised preliminary competition, each taking turns wearing a swimsuit and an evening gown and modeling them for the judges. The beauty queens met with judges on Sunday to conduct the interview portion of the competition.
The scores earned by contestants in the preliminary contest were not released. They are used to determine the 15 top finalists named early on in the telecast Friday.
Gurin said he doesn’t think the Conner flap has hurt the pageant’s reputation. “I think there’s been more focus on the pageant, perhaps, than there might have been otherwise, but I don’t think it’s tarnished anything,” he said. If anything, Gurin conceded, the controversy may draw more viewers to the show. “We don’t want to capitalize from someone’s misfortune,” said Gurin, who marks his fifth year producing the pageant. “Any time there’s something that stirs up the pot, certainly more eyeballs are going to come to watch.”
There’s not much doubt the Conner scandal helped get “Miss USA” back into the national spotlight. Who can name Miss USA 2005? Miss USA 2004? Any Miss USA from the last 20 years?
I don’t know who will win this year but Nicole Bosso, Miss Delaware USA (pictured in story above), looks mighty fine in that swimsuit. Then again, Miss Kentucky USA Michelle Stephanie Banzer, Miss Arkansas USA Kelly George, Miss Indiana USA Jami Stallings, Miss Georgia USA Brittany Swann, Miss Florida USA Jenna Edwards, and Miss Colorado USA Keena Bonella aren’t too bad, either.
Taiza Thomsen, the former Miss Brazil who disappeared five months ago, has contacted Brazilian police from London to say she is well and does not want to be bothered, authorities said Monday. Hmmm, wonder what that’s all about?
Taiza Thomsen, 24, had not talked to her family since September, prompting her parents to request help from authorities last month. In her last conversation with her family, she said she was in London.
The Brazilian federal police said Thomsen called investigators on Saturday to say she was in England and nothing had happened to her.
“Thomsen informed that she was doing well in London and that she didn’t want to be found, not even by her parents,” the police said in a statement.
The investigators said it did not appear she was being pressured or coerced by anybody, and that they would close the case.
“She has the right to stay isolated,” the statement said.
Authorities had been trying to find Thomsen since Jan. 25, when her parents reported she was missing. Police had said it was possible that human trafficking played a role in the disappearance.
Thomsen’s family has said that in some of their conversations before she went missing, she left them with the feeling that she was being threatened. The family did not elaborate.
As news of her disappearance spread, rumors about the case began surfacing throughout Brazil, and there were several reports that she was working in Europe.
One friend said she had spoken to Thomsen by phone several months ago and she was not talking to her parents because she fought with them.
A journalism student with bright blue eyes and long dark hair, Thomsen inherited the title of Miss Brazil in 2002 when titleholder Joseane Oliveira acknowledged being married and was stripped of the title. Thomsen then represented Brazil at the 2003 Miss Universe pageant in Panama.
Following her time as Miss Brazil, Thomsen moved to Sao Paulo in 2005 from her hometown of Joinville, 250 miles south of Sao Paulo. She said at the time she would work as a model.
Another Miss USA tiara is changing heads. Ashley Harder, Miss New Jersey USA, has resigned because she is pregnant. Actually, the real reason she quit is because she can’t stand Donald Trump. They are all going to quit, one by one. [not really, heh]
Harder, 20, told the newspaper she voluntarily stepped down because it’s against pageant rules to compete while pregnant. She could not be reached for comment by The Associated Press.
Both the pageant and the runner-up for 2007 Miss New Jersey USA confirmed Monday that the reins have changed hands. Erin Abrahamson, 23, said pageant officials called her Friday to let her know she would be assuming the title.
“Whatever made her resign, I wish her lots of luck and hope she’s OK,” Abrahamson said of Harder, adding that pageant officials didn’t tell her why she would be taking over.
Harder’s resignation is the latest to hit the pageant.
Miss Nevada USA Katie Rees was stripped of her title after racy photos of her appeared on the Internet. Miss USA Tara Conner, who was caught drinking in New York bars when she was still underage, was allowed to keep her tiara after she agreed to go into rehab and undergo drug testing.
Harder, who was crowned in October, told the newspaper she’s expecting her child in “late summer” and plans to marry her live-in boyfriend.
Pageant spokeswoman Lark-Marie Anton confirmed Harder’s resignation, but would only say it was “for personal reasons.”
The Miss USA pageant is to be held on March 23 in Los Angeles. The winner of that competition goes on to compete in the Miss Universe pageant. Both pageants are owned by Donald Trump and NBC.
At least she didn’t quit because she was photographed shoving her tongue down another girls throat.
Stewart, of Missouri City, Texas, runs a party-planning and motivational speaking company, as well as modeling professionally. She says she wants to dedicate her life to international philanthropy.
