Miss World Leaderboard: Should it be scrapped?
Miss World Leaderboard: Time to scrap it?
Miss World Leaderboard concept was introduced in the year 2011. Under this concept, the girls get points for their performances in challenge events. These points are added to scores for interviews and then the final leaderboard determines Top 10/15 semi-finalists. Last year Top 10 was chosen based on the leaderboard. This concept of leaderboard is one of the many new things that Miss World pageant offered in the past few years. However, unlike some other things, this concept is not yet adopted by the other international pageants. In fact, a large group of people do not approve of this concept. Let us examine its pros and cons.
Further Reading: Evolution of Miss World
There are definitely some pros of this concept and hence it was welcomed by majority of the pageant fans initially. The Miss World Leaderboard shows that just a pretty face is not enough to win the Miss World title. It emphasizes on the overall projection of the winner. The concept is exciting and unique. As the finalists are announced for the challenge events, the leaderboard is updated and the favorites emerge. Even during the finals, the leaderboard gets updated as the show progresses.
While there are some pros, there are many cons of the Miss World Leaderboard concept.
- The scoring pattern has anomalies. Different events have different number of placements. This year there are 24 girls who placed in Sports, while 30 placed in Top Model. Also, the exact scores for each challenge event are different – Beauty With Purpose is scored much higher than other events. The details about those are not revealed to the people in an explicit manner.
- Number of girls do not place in the challenge events by the time finals arrive. Hence, long before the finals they know their fates in advance. It kills the excitement of these girls as well as the people of their countries.
- Home delegate often places in most of the challenge events, at times without deserving. For example, Indonesia in 2013 who placed in Top 11 of Beach Fashion to the surprise of many, or China this year who raised many eye-brows by making the cut in Top Model. These girls reign high in the leaderboard to the dismay of fans who want genuine competition.
- How can you define beauty through such a leaderboard? There is no coherence or cohesiveness in the way the most beautiful girl is chosen from the lot when it is done with such leaderboard. The approach is a bit too statistical and with loopholes, while beauty is a very subjective thing.
- Until last day before finals, the actual placements are not known for the challenge events. Many fans claim that the scores of events and interviews are manipulated so that the organization favorites make the Top 10. Is it true? Who knows. But all this does look like a farce to many.
Thus, the cons of the Miss World Leaderboard concept outnumber the pros of it. Miss World organization should drop the leaderboard and award direct placements to the winners of the challenge events. If they insist on keeping leaderboard, they must reduce the loopholes in the process. They should fix the placements for the events and declare the exact scoring system. Perhaps they can consider keeping only 10 girls by leaderboard (excluding interview scores) while remaining 10 girls make the cut based on judges’ evaluation (which is right now considered in interview scores). In any case, Miss World Organization needs a smarter and more convincing approach of evaluating the beauties.
Images: Miss World