Filipinos Love For Beauty Pageants

Beauty Secrets Cannot Be Kept For Long

The Filipina Beauty (and Brains) has long been a well kept secret for generations. But like most secrets it will eventually find a way to surface.

And even though the Filipina Beauty has been well known in beauty circles, it has its fair share of distractors and rabid haters -- the latest of which is Miss Devina Deviva (or Devina Sharma) of FB Racist Rant Fame. RIP to her Facebook page and more significantly, her job.

Read about her racist rants and her sad state of affairs here.

Poor unrepentant (and grossly uninformed) Devina -- she had to find out the hard way how passionate Filipinos really are about beauty pageants and how she was dead wrong on her views about Philippine beauties.

Note: Since Devina's FB page has since been deleted. Netizens have been referring to her as Devina Deviva, Devina DeDiva, Devina Sharma or whatever name she really has.

Since the 1950s, the top three most prestigious world beauty contests were the Miss Universe, the Miss World and the Miss International. This century, we added a fourth contest, the Miss Earth.

And although there are hundreds and hundreds of beauty pageants being held year in and year out all in every conceivable place all around the world, these four are the most sought after.

The grandmother of these pageants is the Miss World (born in 1951 in the UK). It is considered the oldest surviving major international beauty pageant.

Just as prestigious is the Miss Universe Pageant (the one we know today was born in 1952 which was first held in the USA). Incidentally, the very first Miss Universe Winner, Miss Armi Helena Kuusela of Finland was married to a Filipino businessman named Virgilio Hilario before her term as Miss Universe was over. By doing so, she had to give up her crown for her prince charming.

Not so common knowledge is that the first Miss International and the first Miss Asia were also married to Filipinos. We can also add that the first Miss Earth had a Filipino boyfriend but didn’t end up at the altars.

Miss International (started in 1960 in the US) was won by Marquez Zawadski, who as mentioned earlier married another Filipino businessman, Jorge Araneta.

The fourth top pageant is the Miss Earth (the youngest of the four was started in 2001 in the Philippines).

The Most Elusive For The Philippines – The Miss World

Unlike in the Miss Universe Beauty Pageant where the Philippines was among the inaugural countries who sent their respective contestants in 1952, the country didn't participate in the very first Miss World Beauty Pageant in 1951 and not until 1966.

So since that year, the closest the country has ever gotten to snatching the Miss World crown was in 1973 when Evangeline Pascual came back as first runner-up. This was repeated after another long wait in 2011 when Gwendoline Ruais again placed First World Princess. In 1993, Ruffa Gutierrez placed Second World Princess.

Venezuela

Venezuela is the most successful country as far as world beauty contests are concerned. They have the most victories; and as of this writing they have won 6 Miss Universe crowns (1979-2009), 6 Miss World crowns (1955-2011), 6 Miss International crowns (1985-2010) and one Miss Earth crown (2005).

Brazil

Brazil on the other hand was the first country to win all four pageants. All in all, Brazil has won two Miss Universe crowns (1963, 1968), one Miss World crown (1971), one Miss International crown (1968) and two Miss Earth crowns (2004, 2009).

Philippines

The only Asian country to bag at least one title from the "Big Four".Brazil and Venezuela are the only other two countries (both from South America) who have yet to win at least one crown from the Big Four. The Philippines managed to grab the only crown , they have yet to win, the Miss World courtesy of Megan Young who won Miss World 2013. So far, the Philippines has won two Miss Universe crowns (1969, 1972), one Miss World, four Miss International crowns (1964, 1970, 1979, 2005) and one Miss Earth crown (2008).

Venezuela has the most number of titles in the history of the Big Four pageants, with 19 crowns.

Brazil became the first country to win all four titles, when Priscilla Meirelles won Miss Earth 2004.

In 2005, Venezuela, grabbed the Miss Earth crown to become the second country to achieve this feat.

The Philippines is the third and the only non-South American (and only) Asian country to win all four crowns in 2013.

Other Beauty Trivia and Honorable Mentions are

United States has won 8 Miss Universe crowns, 3 Miss Worlds, 3 Miss Internationals, total 14 crowns..

The UK, Australia and Puerto Rico has each won a total of 7 crowns.

Sweden and Brazil has a total of 6.

The Philippines has a total of 8.

In Asia, the closest Philippine competitor is India, who also have won so far a total of 8 crowns. But they have yet to grab a Miss International crown.

This is the eighth piece in this continuing series entitled Filipinos Love For Bs. Personally, I do think this one is the most maligned as well as the most loved of this uncanny Filipino penchant for stuff starting with the letter B.