Filed under: graphic design
Let’s face it, most Singaporean don’t really give 2 hoots about our local beauty pageant these days. The once glamourous stage to showcase one’s country beauty, grace and brains have somehow lost its once lustrous glory and profile to become just byline inserts on the newspapers and webpostings. Heck… even now I don’t know who our Miss Singapore beauty representatives to the Miss Universe and Miss World contest over the last few years. And I am wagering my soul here that like me, most Singaporeans too don’t know and worst, don’t really care. In short, like any fab, our beauty scene just lost it prime and faded into old news like a discarded favourite old heels in the dark corner of the closet.
Because of that, for the past few years, our local beauty scene has become more of a close door affair, similar to cult like ritual that solo purpose is to come up with a right ‘champion’ to serve an higher purpose. We (the average singaporeans) are aware of such a happening and we are happy with such an arrangement since we don’t really have to bother much about it. We just left it to the right people to do the right job and that is it.
All hell broke loose with the crowning of this year Miss Singapore World winner. Why? It happened innocently enough, a web interview of Miss Ris Low, a contester who later became the winner of Miss Singapore World 2009. Just log onto Youtube and type ‘Ris Low, Singapore’ and you get a inking what I am talking about. Ever since that interview video came out, Miss Low has been creating headlines throughout and for the wrong reasons.
It’s wasn’t much of the bad english and OTT use of Singish that make me just cringe. Her Miss World contest interview was passable by my standard even though it is still make my skin crawl. It was her apparent lack of intellect display during the web interview PLUS together with her bad language usage that I feel made her a laughing sock and infamously the no 1 most criticised Singaporean in Singapore these days.
We all have our internal mental checklist of what a beauty queen is all about, looks aside which is pretty subjective, the rest of the checklist can be summed up to 4 standard parts – Grace, poise, intellect and eloquence. Based on the video, you can’t blame the rest of Singapore to find her seriously lacking in intellect and eloquence. Our Miss Low not only won the crowd but also 8 special awards into that night. No wonder why everyone is screaming bloody conspiracy and baying for blood.
Then came the sucker punch, Miss Low has a conviction of credit card fraud this year, five charges of using illegally obtained credit cards and using them to buy stuffs. The more the press peeled into her past, the more juice they uncover. She has a bipolar disorder that is the reason for her to steal. Instead of declaring upfront about this issue, she kept it underwrap and only after she won the contest and about to sign the contract that she told the organisers.
Naive or just plain dumb I don’t know. Anyone should know thrusting yourself in the limelight is a surefire way to open yourself to scrunity. Just goes to show, your past do come back to haunt you. Because of this issue, Miss Low felt wise to give up her crowd. (Personally, I don’t think she has any chance of keeping it even if she wants to.) If she had come clean before signing up and the organizers allow her, I would gave her a big applause citing that she a brave gal, raising up to give herself a second chance. Heck, I think the media might have love her even. Thats human nature for ya, we are funny that way too.
Chapter closed? End of story? Nope… barely the dust has settled, Miss Low is now claiming that the runner up Miss Claire Lee is the one who backstabbed her and leaking to the media about her probation. And adding fuel to fire, Miss Low is citing Miss Lee is faking her back injury to save herself from embarrassment. This is turning out to be a full blown mudslinging contest and I guessing it won’t end anytime soon.
Beauty, backstabbing, fraud and deceit. This is fast turning out to be a espisode of CSI Miami I telling ya… all that is missing is just a chalk outlined body. -_-’
So what is it? Is our 2009 stock of beauty contesters really that bad? Has our beauty scene come down to this state? There something rather tragicially funny about the whole deal. Either way, our organisers have a lot to answer for on their part. I personally said we should shoot all the organisers, Yes, it is not easy to train beauty contesters and host a beauty pageant and there is alot at stake. Fair enough, then shouldn’t ERM World Marketing do abit more to ensure this kind of circus shouldn’t happen in the first place by paying more due diligence.
One thing for sure, at the end of the day, no one gonna come clean and a winner out of this. And as typical human being, we just happy to be at the side line being slightly insensitive and enjoying the whole ‘dirty laundry’ fiasco. Why? Coz… its just plain human nature.
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yeah.. it was Boomz *awakening noise* and Shingzz *shiver in disgust* for Ris.
Comment by Alicia December 13, 2009 @ 2:12 pm