They entered the room in single file, hips swaying, lips pouting, eyes shining, to be unveiled and paraded. Six gorgeous women.
But the solemnity of the occasion indicated they were more than that. They were a nation’s glory.
Selection and training was complete and this was the finished product: glossy beauties given the task of maintaining Venezuela’s dominance in international beauty pageants.
The seriousness of the mission was underlined by the reverential way Venezuela greeted this week’s debutantes at a press conference in Caracas. On their slender shoulders rested the country’s hopes of retaining the Miss Universe title.
”We have trained them well and trained them to win. We don’t want to be runner-up,” said Osmel Sousa, president of the Miss Venezuela pageant. ”They are disciplined. They are ready.”
The Olympics barely registered here — Venezuela took just one medal, a bronze — but passions are stirring for the coming beauty contests in which the country hopes to prevail.
It is an obsession that has won Venezuela more Miss Universe and Miss World titles than any other country and a reputation as a pageant superpower.
”When it comes to this we don’t improvise anything. We are organised and dedicated, we don’t rest,” said Carlos Bardasano, vice-president of Cisneros Group, the media conglomerate that owns the Miss Venezuela pageant.
This week’s unveiling, akin to a sheet being whisked off a new formula one car, was a prelude to next week’s contest to crown Miss Venezuela, an annual television ratings topper.
Elsewhere such contests can run into trouble. Feminist protests forced Miss Sweden to withdrawn from an international pageant in Mexico and riots in Nigeria, where the exhibition of female flesh was deemed offensive, turned into a bloodbath.
In Venezuela there is no such risk. Many ordinary Venezuelans, male and female, proudly assert that this is a land blessed with two things: oil and beautiful women. There are thousands of local beauty contests held annually in schools and villages and banks offer loans for nose jobs.
President Hugo Chávez has railed against widespread cosmetic surgery — girls as young as 15 request breast enlargements as birthday presents — and has tried to steer the country in a more socialist and less materialistic direction.
But not even the commandante criticises the pageants. As a young army officer in 1975 he compered a contest and married a blonde model-turned TV presenter. In July he congratulated Dayana Mendoza, who took the Miss Universe crown in Vietnam.
Her victory restored Venezuela’s fading lustre. After dominating pageants in the 1980s and 1990s the country endured a 12-year title drought. Some attributed it to perceptions that its contestants were more surgically enhanced than others, or unease at Chávez’s broadsides against the United States.
”If somebody asks about politics I tell them to change the subject,” said Sousa (60) the national pageant president.
A dapper dandy who has been dubbed a Henry Higgins, he said the country was on track for more triumphs thanks to natural talent and the academy he runs in Caracas. ”It is a school for beauty. What we do there is make a few changes.”
From a field of some 500 women numbers are whittled down to 70, then 28. Aged from 18 to mid-20s, the successful applicants’ key ingredient is height. Anything else, said Sousa, can be added or taken away.
The would-be Misses rise at dawn to attend a gym and spend the rest of the day learning to dance, walk in heels and answer rapid-fire questions in 30-second soundbites.
”It’s like a military school, it is really tough,” said Miss Trujillo, one of the six shortlisted hopefuls paraded this week. ”Apart from the exercise there is the diet, chicken and salad, chicken and salad.”
All the women spoke of the discipline in terms of awe. ”I tell you, if our sports learn the same discipline you will be seeing a lot of success in five years time,” said Veronica Arcay, aka Miss Portugesa. – guardian.co.uk