A Miss Australia beauty contestant who was criticised for being
too skinny wouldn't even have made the cut in New Zealand,
according to local organisers.
Sydney teenager Stephanie Naumoska's 'skinny' frame threw
Australia's Miss Universe contest into controversy with doctors and
dieticians complaining the leading finalist was "skin and bones"
and dangerously malnourished.
The Miss Universe-New Zealand contest will take place in Levin on Saturday night.
The 19-year-old, who is 180cm tall and weighs 52 kilograms, was one of 32 contestants from more than 7,000 hopefuls to make the glittering final at an event promoting "healthy, proportioned, bodies".
But Naumoska has a body mass index of just 15.1, well under the
official 18 benchmark for malnutrition.
"She would be categorised as underweight and I would certainly want
to be doing an assessment of her diet to make sure she doesn't have
some type of eating disorder," dietician Melanie McGrice told local
newspapers in Australia.
"She needs blood tests, diet analysis and an overall
assessment."
New Zealand chief pageant judge, Jonathan Westbrook, says if she was his daughter, he would have tried to feed her straight away.
Susie Burrell, a nutritionist in New Zealand, says the concern was that there were some good examples of malnutrition on Stephanie's body.
"There's some muscle wasting particularly in the upper body".
Some believe those signs of malnutrition mean the young beauty shouldn't have even made the finals of Miss Australia.
But Naumoska maintains she's healthy.
"I'm very hurt and upset by what they've been saying, and I think that it's very unfair, and I also think that it's very unfair& just to all the other girls out there who have the same body as myself."
And Australia's pageant director Deborah Miller agreed with her,
saying Naumoska's Macedonian heritage accounted for her extreme
thinness.
"They have long, lithe bodies and small bones. It is their body
type, just like Asian girls tend to be small," Miller said.
Burrell disagreed, saying there was no such thing as a Macedonian body type.
Even the girls competing for Miss Universe New Zealand this weekend disagree with Naumoska and Miller, saying the 19-year-old badly needs to put on more weight.
"I didn't think that the model shown represented a healthy body weight and that's what pageants are all about. We do want to foster a healthy image to then portray to, for example, younger girls," said Kate Hockley, a Miss New Zealand contestant.
Local organisers say they wouldn't let someone so thin compete, with the NZ Miss Universe National Director Val Lott saying girls who want to compete here need to be a healthy good size 10.
"When they submit an entry and put a size six or eight, I email them back and say, before you send me an entry form I do want to be sure that you are a size eight to 10."
In the end, Naumoska was defeated in the final by 20-year-old television presenter and model Rachael Finch from Townsville, who ended up winning the Miss Australia title and will compete in the Miss Universe world finals in the Bahamas in August.
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