About 10 days ago, I stumbled on Miss World Kenya 2012 Kenya airing on TV. By this episode, the number of girls competing was down to 14. One had turned 20 the week of (or before) before the recording. I guess the others were roughly in the same age range. The show was mainly set in some place where the girls were facing three judges, and a presenter interviewed the girls and talked to the audience about the past week, I think. At apropriate times, we were shown clips of the events being discussed. I found it interesting that when the subject was bikini modelling, the bikini shots were not shown. The decision makers must have decided to lean on the conservative side. It was also interesting to watch the line of girls stand smiling in apparently practised poses while one of them was being interviewed in front.
What sort of annoyed me was things that apparently were considered offences. One of the contestants, I think it was the one who had just turned 20, was put on probation with an admonition to lose weight. I do not know what the story had been with her weight, but I doubt that she was the heaviest of the group, and in fact, she was reasonably slender in my view.
In one of the clips, we were shown the girls in a bus. One of them was asked what cause she would take up if she became Miss World. She said she would help orphans and I think cancer patients. The judges now asked her if she was aware that one of the contestants was an orphan. The girl said yes, she was aware. The judge said the girl should have been more sensitive, and the poor girl got evicted for that! Does the fact that there is an orphan around mean you should not say you want to help orphans?
During the show, Ajuma, who was captioned as a supermodel, appeared to help the girls learn something or the other. Note that she is a supermodel. One of the girls, Nickitar Omondi (yes, they spelt it that way) was asked something about Face of Africa or something and she answered something to the effect that she would go for it. One of the judges, Dr Amritpal Kapur (in the next episode they called her Dr Amrit something-else), later told Miss Omondi, with apparent vindictiveness, that she had said before the judges that she was using Miss World as a stepping stone to modelling. The judge said this as if it was a bad thing. The judge declared that Miss Omondi would not make a mockery of the comppetition, and that she was thereby evicted.
Huh? Is there something wrong with wanting to become a model (like Ajuma who was brought in as a coach)? Should the girls limit their ambitions to Miss World? Had the girls been told this before? Again, I did not have background information, but I felt that was unfair.
I again stumbled on the final episode, and at least in that one, I liked the girl who was crowned. She was quite girl-next-door and still pretty.
Baba Amor's Thoughts 