Bikinis return to Miss S’pore World
The bikini returned -- although briefly -- to the Miss Singapore World 2011 beauty pageant on Thursday night.
This was after first-time organisers Limelite productions initially canned the bikini segment during an overhaul of the event, prompting many to question the purpose of a beauty contest without showing some skin.
In the end, Limelite changed its mind, and twenty contestants spent six minutes in total walking on the catwalk in their swimsuits at the Suntec City Convention Hall Ballroom.
Raymund Ooi, head of Limelite, told The New Paper, "We felt it was necessary to showcase the girls in their swimwear. But they didn't have to take to answering questions in bikinis."
He also added that the judges had already assessed the girls' physiques at an earlier separate event in July.
Miss World CEO Julia Morley had brought Ooi in to revamp the pageant after she slammed the local edition of it earlier this year for "having a showgirl club image".
The contest was previously organised by ERM World Marketing, which had run it for seven years.
Ooi also collaborated with national fund-raiser Community Chest so that contestants could interact with special needs children. In the grand finale, 20 children from the Woodlands Garden School of the Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore (Minds) walked together with the ladies on their final catwalk.
At the end, it was 21-year-old May Hsu who beat 10 finalists to clinch the title of Miss World Singapore.
She wowed the judges with her answer after Gurmit Singh, one of the 10 judges, asked her, "If you had to pick between wealth and looks, what would it be?"
The biomedical student said, "I'd rather go for wealth because it's a more logical answer. "As we know, as technology progresses, we'd have the ability to do plastic surgery. If you have the money, you can change your looks."
With that, she won a crown and a spectre, worth nearly $30,000, together with more than $10,000 in cash and prizes.
Hsu will also be flying to London to represent Singapore in the international edition of the contest in November.
