Miss World

It started as the Festival Bikini contest, in honour of the recently introduced swimwear of the time, but was called Miss World by the press. It was originally planned as a one-off event. Upon learning about the upcoming Miss Universe pageant, Morley decided to make the pageant an annual event.

Opposition to the wearing of bikinis led to their replacement with more modest swimwear after the first contest. In 1959, the British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC started broadcasting the competition. The pageant's popularity grew as the popularity of television grew.

Along with the rival Miss Universe pageant, Miss World has grown to be the most sought after and prestigious title in beauty pageantry. It is the most widely attended and broadcast such event, with over a hundred delegates in competition (Miss Universe, by comparison, welcomes approximately 80 delegates). The road to the Miss World crown is a long one. In the year preceding the global finals, each delegate must win her national title or a specially designated Miss World national preliminary. The annual final is typically a month long extravaganza, with several preliminary events, galas, dinners, balls and activities, culminating in a globally telecast final show in which the field is narrowed to between 15-20 delegates.

The winner spends a year travelling the globe representing the Miss World organization in its various causes. MW has an explicitly altruistic agenda, and has raised over 250 million pounds for various global charities.

Miss World 2005, Unnur "Laffy" Birna

Controversies surrounding the Pageant

The Miss World pageant seems to have been the target of many controversies since its inception.

* In 1970, feminist protesters threw flour bombs during the live event at London's Royal Albert Hall, temporarily scaring host Bob Hope.
* The first winner from the United States, 1973's Marjorie Wallace, was forced to resign because of her high-profile serial monogamy.
* The 1974 winner Helen Morgan (Miss World) resigned four days later after it was discovered she was a single parent.
* In 1976, several countries went on a boycott, because the pageant included both a Caucasian and African representative for South Africa. In yet another shut-out for the nation for its apartheid policy, South Africa competed for the last time in 1977, before it was welcomed back in 1991 as that policy disintegrated.
* The 1980 winner Gabriela Brum of Germany resigned one day after winning, initially claiming her boyfriend disapproved. A few days later it emerged that she had been forced to resign after it was discovered that she posed naked for a magazine.
* In 1996, wide-scale protests took place in Bangalore, India over the hosting of the beauty contest. The swimsuit shootings were moved to Seychelles, and heavy security was in place for every move the contestants made. Despite the chaos, the pageant's live telecast went on without a problem.
* Just days after her 1998 crowning, Israel's Linor Abargil revealed that she had been raped only two months before the pageant. One of the highlights of her year was seeing her accused rapist convicted.

In the 1980s, the pageant repositioned itself with the Advertising slogan Beauty With a Purpose. The contest added tests of intelligence (trait and personality. By the 1990s, the pageant was reaching two billion viewers from almost every country in the world. The competition has been seen as old-fashioned and rather political correctness in its native Britain. Despite the global appeal, the show was not broadcast on any major terrestrial British TV network for several years, until Channel Five aired it in 1998.

* In 2002 problems occurred in in Nigeria. See below for an account.