There is little doubt that the contestants in most beauty pageants are stunning. They present themselves as people with diverse interests, they predictably they say all the right things, love children and koala bears. They’re almost always tall and slim, with long hair, and high cheek bones. They are young.

It doesn’t take very long to observe that Miss Universe is a clone. The shame is that there is almost never a dark skinned representative from countries when there is a light skinned alternative. It’s cool that they represent their countries, but a shame that they don’t..

Miss Universe is not about universal representation at all, it’s about aggregating the Anglo Saxon definition of beauty extracted from all over the world, and then parading it as the overarching standard of beauty. They are slender, ivory, 120 pound cogs in a large and dark propaganda machine. A capitalist machine, sure, but on what is it fueled?

Beautiful they are. Stunning, in fact. But they are not universal. They are not representative – not of people – not of beauty.