Plan B Forum

She may not have won the Miss USA competition, but Miss Utah has emerged as one of the most talked about contestants on social media for her rambling and cringeworthy answer to a question about women's wages.



Some have branded Marissa Powell's response during the question-and-answer session as one of the worst in the history of the competition after she blurted out that the US needs to "try to figure out how to create education better".

One of the competition judges, NeNe Leakes, had asked the 21-year-old: "A recent report shows that in 40 per cent of American families with children, women are the primary earners, yet they continue to earn less than men. What does this say about society?"

Powell faltered her way through her response, at one point stopping mid-way through a sentence to smile, to cheers from the audience.

“I think we can relate this back to education, and how we are continuing to try to strive … to …," she began, before pausing.

" .... figure out how to create jobs right now. That is the biggest problem and I think, especially the men are … um … seen as the leaders of this, and so we need to try to figure out how to create education better so that we can solve this problem. Thank you.”

"Miss Utah" was trending on Twitter in the US following the competition, with some suggesting hers was the worst answer of all time.

But others believe that crown goes to a contestant in the Miss Teen USA 2007 competition, who became an unwitting national celebrity with her rambling, nonsensical answer.

When asked why many Americans couldn't locate the US on a world map, Miss South Carolina Caitlin Upton responded that "some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like, such as South Africa and the Iraq, everywhere like, such as..."

The latest blunder was attracting plenty of attention on Twitter.

"Miss Utah, please go back to 2nd grade... Right now," tweeted @Scott-Popescu.

@RyanWoodDFW wrote: "Hey, Miss South "Maps" Carolina! You're finally off the hook. Send the thank you card to Miss Utah! #missusa."

Another person wrote that the video was hard to look at, but "even harder to look away".

Despite the blunder, Powell won third runner-up in Miss USA, as well as Miss Photogenic honours.

Miss Connecticut, Erin Brady, took out the competition and will represent the US at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/beauty/ ... z2WWLMAFOM

...none of this has to do with whether beautiful women or pageant contestants can be smart or are smart. Some are! Some are not! Welcome to the broad sweep of humanity.

She's not in the news for being dumb; she's in the news for being bad at spontaneous but convincing balderdash manufacturing, and because it's fun to watch a carefully orchestrated spectacle crash on the rocks. She's not a dumb person; she's bad at public speaking. And if she were good at it, nobody would have ever heard of her.

Gob wrote:Get them out of gowns and swimsuits would be even better.

Bologna: When the new Miss Italia was asked on her way to winning the glitzy televised contest what historical period she would like to have lived in, her answer caught most Italians by surprise.



Eighteen-year-old Alice Sabatini prompted incredulity online after telling the pageant judges that her epoch of choice was 1942, one of the darkest years of World War II and the Mussolini dictatorship.

Asked why she had chosen that year, the contestant from Lazio said she wanted to "live" the war, noting that she would not have had to fight since she is a woman.

"Well ... to see really what the Second World War was like, since the books talk about it for page after page. I want to live it. In any case I am a woman so I wouldn't have had to do military service, so I would have been at home with the fear of ..." she said, trailing off with a light laugh.

Her chosen year was the one during which Anne Frank began writing her diary, and the Nazis began gassing tens of thousands of Jews at Auschwitz and other camps.

Germany, Italy's ally at the time, invaded Vichy France. Hundreds of Italians died in the North African campaign, including the long retreat from the Battle of El Alamein.

More than 20,000 Italians also died in the Battle of Stalingrad that year, many during the bloody defeat of the Italian 8th Army near the Don River.

Miss Sabatini's desire to relive one of Europe's bloodiest years triggered a barrage of satire online. Twitter montages featured her smiling as she sashayed in her bikini through battlefields. An Italian satirist known as "the Jackal" produced a spoof video that quickly went viral.


But Miss Sabatini's response did not seem to damage her standing in the pageant, which she won based on both judge's scores and viewer call-in votes.

The jokes prompted one pageant judge, Vladimir Luxuria, a transgender actress and politician, to call for understanding. "Try to imagine the emotions of a young woman who had all the spotlight on her: she panicked," Miss Luxuria said.

Miss Sabatini defended her comments on Tuesday, saying she was caught off guard as the first contestant to be asked the question, but had meant to express admiration for her great grandmother, who is still alive and always recalls the Second World War.

"I would have liked to live through what she had gone through in those years," Miss Sabatini was reported as saying in an interview published in Urban Post. "For better and for worse."


Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/world/m ... z3mW0wXGC8