Miss U.K. rescinds crown after extreme demand from pageant organizers that left her speechless

ZOIEY SMALE (FACEBOOK)

Miss United Kingdom has rescinded her crown and withdrawn from the upcoming Miss United Continents pageant in Ecuador after competition she said organizers told her they needed her “to lose as much weight as possible for the finals.”

Speaking with the Mail Online, Zoiey Smale, 28, from Nottinghamshire said that she was initially left speechless after Ecuadorian directors for the upcoming pageant demanded that she go “on a diet plan.” The mother of one added that the comments “hurt like hell,” and that she didn’t speak to the directors for two weeks in wake of the uncomfortable conversation. In the end, she said she decided to resign as Miss UK and retire from pageant competition altogether.

In a Facebook post, the beauty queen said that she had felt manipulated by beauty contest organizers in the past.

“I was branded ‘fat’ because I am size 10,” she wrote. “I actually believed that I was so disgusting that no one would ever love me. How sad is that?”

“I love seeing queens on my news feeds promoting giving through charity work, educating themselves, eating well and enjoying life,” she added. “Those women know how hard it is to be a queen and run a normal life alongside everything else. It saddens me that even still, there are pageant directors who believe you must be skinny to be beautiful.”

Smale says that she now plans on working to raise awareness about so-called “rogue” beauty contests in which curvier women are relegated to the background and made to wear sarongs over their swimsuits while the slimmer women are made to “sit at the arm of a man over dinner” like “escorts.”

Sadly, Smale is hardly the first beauty queen to be targeted by pageant organizers over her weight. Just last year, an Icelandic beauty queen quit a pageant after being told she was “too fat.” In 1996, former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, then 18, was allegedly nicknamed “Miss Piggy” by Donald Trump, and endured public humiliation after being forced to work out in front of a gloating Trump and a crowd of paparazzi.

Read the full story at Mashable and The Daily Mail.

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http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2017/08/31/miss-u-k-rescinds-crown-after-extreme-demand-from-pageant-organizers-that-left-her-speechless/