The year 2019 is about to wrap up and in the universe of pageantry, there are plenty of disappointments. Many deserving candidates failed to make it to the semis of Big5 pageants and it has been a tradition at Missosology that we pay homage to these wonderful women. This is of course different from overhyped candidates in what is now known as El Tocuyo Award. The award refers to the hometown of Miss Venezuela 2015 Mariam Habach who was tagged as one of the front-runners during Miss Universe 2016 but she failed to make it to the semis.
Starting with Miss Earth, Missosology beauty experts were disappointed that Michell Castellanos of Venezuela failed to make the cut. She was actually one of the frontrunners having won a gold medal in the evening gown competition and a silver at the resort wear contest. Add the fact that Venezuela has a strong sash weight at Miss Earth with two crowns in its kitty and the exclusion of Michell Castellanos will become one of the great mysteries of 2019.
One thing that analysts have pointed out is that Miss Earth is doing away with its usual favorite countries. In previous editions, it is easy to predict on who will make it to the Top 5 but this year, there has been a significant shake-up. This is also probably the reason why the countries that usually land at Top 5 fared poorly. For example, Miss Brazil failed to the make the cut while Miss Philippines did not progress further than the Top 20.
At Miss International, Miss Cote d’Ivoire Tara Gueye has been labeled as the woman who can break that tough glass ceiling at the pageant. Since no black African has ever won the Miss International crown, analysts had been pushing for that idea that Tara Gueye will be the candidate that will finally make history. In one instance, she even topped the Missosology’s Hot Picks lists!
During the last stretch of the contest though, it was the candidate from Uganda that carried the African banner. The panel of beauty experts seems to have foreseen this as on the Final Hot Picks, Uganda topped the list while Miss Cote d’Ivoire Tara Gueye ended up on the 14th place. Come finals night, Tara Gueye was left out and it is quite apparent that Miss International decided to allot Africa with only a single slot in the semis despite record number of candidates from the continent.
Using the phrase if only she were there is of course reviewing a hypothetical situation completely different from the actual results. Miss Brazil Fernanda Souza for example may not be a strong candidate at Miss Supranational but there are no reasons to believe she is not worthy to become one of the semifinalists. Brazil is quite strong at the pageant having placed in the semis in 7 instances out of its 10-year participation at Miss Supranational. Fernanda’s non-placement at the semis may not be that shocking but it raises the question on what are the real circumstances that prevented her from placing.
Fernanda Souza is a charming candidate with striking beauty and a supermodel aura. According to some sources she was actually 4 candidates shy from making it to the Top 30. For more than 10 years, Missosology has thrown in conspiracy theories, implicit bias and even political flavor to explain the exclusion of a worthy candidate. In the case of Fernanda Souza however, it looks like there were just too many brilliant candidates at the Miss Supranational 2019 pageant.
Miss Universe 2019 has produced one of the exciting results that many believed was ground breaking. Not that there were no black Miss Universe winners before but rather the standards of beauty have been aligned to the 21st century. That’s a bit of bad news for the brown haired and Caucasian beauty Miss Argentina Mariana Varela. She has been under the radar of Missosology’s Hot Picks peaking at the 10th place in the 3rd Hot Picks before settling to 14th at the final list.
The expectations were a bit high for Mariana Varela. Sure, her country does not have sash weight to rely on but Mariana was trained by legendary national director Osmel Sousa. Beauty analysts were keen to see if the magic of The Czar of Beauty is still working. Sadly, the exclusion of Mariana from the semis was a bad news for the reputation of Osmel.
Miss World as always is capable of shock and surprise. That’s a given among pageant analysts who rely mainly on the results of the pre-finals Top Model competition to gauge each and every candidate. This year, among the Top 10 of Top Model competition, only two failed to be in the semis: the candidate from Kazakhstan and Miss Czech Republic Denisa Spergerová. Among the two, it was Denisa Spergerová that missosologists missed the most.
Denisa is a statuesque beauty who made it to the Top 12 of the Missosology’s Miss World Final Hot Picks. There was actually a consensus among the panel of beauty experts that Denisa’s beauty can’t be ignored by Miss World judges. It was quite sad to see her failing to make the cut and there was difficulty in pinpointing the exact reason. This is after all the Miss World pageant. We should always be ready for some shock and plenty of surprises.
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