Miss USA was petite for a pageant contestant. In the non-pageant world, she is average height.

Where were the plus-size contestants?

NOWHERE.

TRAGIC.

Does it really matter how tall she is?

Exactly. In any case, I brought up the plus=positive; petite=negative POV because that's what I've been feeling. I've seen tons of talk shows and magazine shows that discuss plus-sized women and how they are proud to be plus, but it seems to be the opposite for petite women. Even short celebrities rarely bring up their height. TRAGIC, don't you think?

incredibly

You raise an interesting point, valkyrie. In a recent edition of a Vancouver paper, a writer interviewed Nazanin Afshin-Jam (she is Persian ethnicity) who represented Canada at Miss World a few years back and came in 1st R.U. (i.e. not Miss Universe)
http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=19177

Anyhow, Nazanin made a very good point that "“Nowadays, youth don’t listen to politicians, they listen to stars.”
So I think there is something to be said for using one's God-given looks to one's advantage. Hell, Angelina Jolie gets paid bazzillions of dollars for pretending to be someone she is not (i.e. acting).

Oh well....<shrug>

IMO the Miss Universe pageant is almost completely a beauty pageant. The charity work the winner does is *just* enough for them to say "I do charity work. Yay!" For the most part, they are supposed to just sit there and look pretty. That is all.

Get off your high horse already. (or would that be low horse?)

LMAO about the "low horse" comment...
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...............

People have been saying how they can see contestants' ribcages, meaning that these girls are really, really slim, which is why I brought up height. These girls are really, really slim and for the most part, extremely tall. People are always criticizing the media for having few average or larger sized people, yet they rarely say anything about short people and fashion. So once again, why is it all right for plus sized women to be loud and proud about their size and criticizing the media about the lack of their people while it isn't okay for me to do so? I'm sure that if I was a size 14, then you'll all be applauding me for my site, my signature and my posts.

I just had to laugh at that picture of the horse...

I thought Ms. Puerto Rico, while a beautiful girl, looked like a tramp in that dress! It didn't scream "take me seriously" it screamed "take me to bed"

I was pulling for Ms. Japan, i thought she was beautiful but when she messed up her question, I cringed

My friend has competed in the Miss America preliminaries, but has not won the Miss Missouri or Illinois yet, the ones she needs to go TO Miss America and she has a very LOW opinion of Miss USA/Miss Universe pagents. Their history was much more commercial than Miss America's.

Normally I try to stay out of the GC fray but I have to say for the love of all that's good and pure..... STOP TALKING ABOUT THE WHOLE PETITE THING!!!!!" :eek: :eek: :eek: I wanted to talk about the pageant, the dresses, the bad answers to the interview questions, all the stuff that's fun about a pageant. The discussion about Miss America didn't turn into a rant. This one shouldn't either. There are already threads on GC that deal with the woes of being petite. Let keep those woes in that thread!!! If we want to talk about height, let's be in awe of their height (I mean, I am just FLOORED at how many broke the 6'0" mark!).

In conclusion: there are plenty of women how win pageants in this country and others who are not tall. I competed for years and got beat by plenty of people who were not as tall as me. Even with their heels on and mine off I still towered over them. It all comes down to the presentation!! And that's what is really the fun part to talk about!

I now step off of my soapbox... we may now return to the regularly scheduled programing. :D

ETA: for those who have already said something similar to this, I say thank you. If I tick anybody off I apologize. I just got a little pissed that this thread was being hickjacked about a topic not even remotely close to what the thread was about.

Plus it was smooshing and weighing her boobs down in a really weird and painful-looking way. I didn't watch the pageant, so I don't know if her dress was like that the whole time. But the one picture that was posted on the previous page of this thread made me go "Oww!".

Watched the pageant and got to watch project runway last night.

When I saw the pageant I absolutely loved the dress Tara wore. It complemented her figure and her body color nicely. She looked gorgeous in it. After having watched the show, she definately picked the best dress to wear for the competition.

As for wearing another dress, they have the preliminaries, she probably wore a red dress for the the pre-lims and was saving this one for the actual competition.

I personally thought she was robbed. Her answers on the final two questions were amazing, but she got fourth. Yet, Japan, who didn't even answer her questions correctly (ie. she didn't answer what she was actually asked) made it to 1st runner up. WTF?!? That makes absolutely no sense to me.

I thought Puerto Rico's dress was absolutely hideous. I'm sorry as a judge I'd be looking at the dress and how they carry the dress off and what it looks like as a factor. Because let's face it they are all beautiful women so "looks" really can't be a determining factor. I mean during the swimsuit I was actually looking at how they were carrying themselves and if they looked like they actually ate.

I think this is probably why I appreciate the Miss America pageant more, because they do more interview questions, a talent portion and the girls recieve scholarships to continue their education.

Question (because I'm to lazy to look for the Miss USA thread), is Tara greek?