Maria Julia Mantilla Garcia of Peru is Miss World. Since the Miss World site has crappy load times I can’t do my survey of contestants, which is best since I should be doing other things. But about Ms. Garcia:
It is not surprising that though only 15% of Peruvians claim to be white, their representative in a beauty contest is no Inca Princess. Nevertheless, I think the fact that Latin American countries generally hold up fair ladies as the ideal of beauty, or that Bollywood actors & actresses are generally shifted several standard deviations from the South Asian median in complexion, should give Americans some breathing room for any criticisms that our beauty ideals are “too white” when 70% of the population is non-Hispanic European in origin….
For comparison, Miss Bolivia seems to be a Mestizo, though she hails from the lowlands rather than the Andes. It might just be that the Andean poples do not normally exhibit the leggy and svelte phyisque preferred for Miss World (which is even less substantive than Miss Universe from what I can gather).
P.S. Miss United States seems like not only is she shifted from the “All American” norm in looks, she is smarter than typical.
Posted by razib at 02:31 PM