The Miss Universe beauty pageant updated its rules for the first time since its foundation 72 years ago to allow married women and/or women with children to participate from 2023, according to the informational website Business Insider, citing a memorandum sent to those responsible. regional competition.
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Currently it only allows single women between the ages of 18 and 28 who have never been married or had children to compete.
Those rules will apply to the current contest, whose initial stages have already begun.
In the future, that age limit will remain in force.
Candidates in the final phase of Miss Universe in Israel in December 2021. MENAHEM KAHANA / AFP via Getty Images
“We all believe that women should have power over their lives and that the personal decisions of a human being should not be a barrier to their success,” the Miss Universe organization stated in its internal memo, as reported by The National magazine.
The Mexican Andrea Meza, winner in 2020, assured Business Insider: "Honestly, I am delighted, in the same way that society changes and now women occupy leadership positions that in the past only men could aspire to, it was time that beauty pageants will change and open up to women with families".
"There are many women who got married young or had children in their early 20s and had always wanted to participate in Miss Universe but couldn't because of the rules," she added, "now those women can start or propel their careers in the entertainment industry." thanks to those changes.
Miss Mexico 2022, Irma Miranda, listens to the advice of her countrywoman Andrea Meza for Miss Universe
July 15, 202202:02
Meza herself was affected by this rule when Internet users accused her of having raped her, after she appeared in a photo in a wedding dress next to a man in a tuxedo on a cliff of outstanding natural beauty.
The winner of the 2020 contest clarified that it had been a photo for the Chihuahua tourism office, for which she worked while she lived there.
"Some people are against these changes because they always wanted to see a beautiful, single woman available for a relationship. They always wanted to see a woman who from the outside looks so perfect that she's almost unattainable. The first is sexist, the second unreal," Meza added.
