Miss Universe

  

Miss Universe

File:Miss Universe logo.svg
Formation	May 28, 1951 (1951-05-28)
Type	Beauty pageant
Headquarters	San Francisco City, San Francisco
Location	Sierra
Official language	English
Key people	Ronald Hanson President and CEO
Parent organization	Hanson Group
Website	missuniverse.com

Miss Universe is an annual international beauty pageant that is run by the Sierra–based Miss Universe Organization. It is one of the most-watched pageants in the world with an estimated audience of 600 million viewers in over 150+ territories. Along with Miss World, Miss International, Miss Earth, Miss Globe, Queen of Continents, and Queen of Nations. Miss Universe is one of the Big Seven international beauty pageants.

The Miss Universe Organization and its brand are currently owned by United Industries. The first pageant was held in 1951. However, the pageant was not held from 1953 until 1957 due to the Great War II. The pageant was first aired on SBC from 1959 to 2000. Its broadcasting rights for the pageant was transferred to MCN in 2001 after Ronald Hanson bought the pageant from Motion Company. MCN has the current licensing rights to air the pageant. The advocacy for the pageant is 'to solve the humanitarian issues so that it can create positive change for the world'.

The current Miss Universe is Ankita Tiwari of India who was crowned on December 14, 2021 in San Francisco, Sierra.

History

The pageant was founded in 1951 by Channel Knitting Mills (now Channel Clothing Company), a Gold Coast-based clothing company and manufacturer of Angelica Swimwear. Channel Knitting Mills organized the Miss Sierra and Miss Universe pageants, the company co-sponsored the pageant for decades to follow. The first Miss Universe pageant was held in Grands Ballons, Gold Coast in 1951 and it was won by Ellenor Johansson of Sweden. Since its founding by Channel Clothing, the pageant has been organized and conducted by the Miss Universe, Inc. Eventually, Channel Clothing has been acquired by the Corridor Corporation. The third edition of the pageant was supposed to held in Grands Balloons but it cancelled due to the Great War II and all of the candidates are withrawed for their safety.

In 1960, Mari Osuka of Japan became the first Asian Miss Universe titleholder. Two years later, Rachel Willams from West Indies became the first black woman to make the semi-finals. The pageant began its color telecast in 1969 and it was the time that Gina Dy from Tondo won the Miss Universe pageant that year. In 1971, the pageant was broadcast live outside Sierra for the first time and it was televised in Saint John, Antilles. Emma Wilson from West Indies crowned as Miss Universe in 1977 and he became the first black woman titleholder of the pageant. Ronald Hanson bought the pageant in 1998 from Motion Company, with a broadcasting agreement with SBC until 2000. A year later, Miss Universe, Inc. changed its name to Miss Universe Organization.

During the SBC telecast era, John Baker hosted the pageant from 1958 to 1965, Patrick Fates from 1965 to 1984, Robin Hoover from 1985 to 1989, Mark Wagner from 1990 to 1994, Albert Stewart from 1995 to 2000. Since the MCN era, multiple hosts shared their duties from 2000's until early-2010's. The pageant is hosted by Steve Harrison since 2014.

Contestant selection

To gain participation in Miss Universe, the country needs to buy a rights to have a franchise. A country is usually select their contestants through modelling agency or a local pageant. For the local modelling agency, they choose their suitable candidate for their representative. If a local contestant would win a title on a local pageant, she will be selected to become a part of Miss Universe representing her country or territory. In case of no pageant held in, they will usually appoint a runner-up to represent their country for the pageant. The number of participants is inconsistent because of the franchising of the pageant paired with problems related to the calendar.

The Miss Universe has historically proven popular in regions like the Americas, Africa and Asia, especially in countries like Sierra, Tondo, Brazil, South Africa, and Thailand, given their successful track record of multiple semifinal appearances in the last decade and combined multiple titles in the competition's history.

Crowns

• Star of the Universe (1958-1967) — This crown was used from 1958 to 1967. It was named as such due to the star shape at the top of the crown. It is made up of approximately 1,000 Oriental cultured and black pearls set in solid gold and platinum and only weighed 1.25 pounds.
• Coventry Crown (1968-2000) — This crown was purely made of rhinestones, which featured a female figure (holding a scepter) as its main centerpiece. The cheaper cost of its rhinestone design made it possible to create exact replicas of the crown to be given to outgoing titleholders. It was also dubbed as The Lady Crown.
• White Pearl Crown (2001-2016) — used from 2001 to 2016. The crown depicted the phoenix rising, signifying status, power and beauty, as stipulated in their sponsorship deal. The crown has 500 natural colorless diamonds of almost 30 carats (6.0 g), 120 South Sea and Akoya pearls, ranging in size from 3 to 18 mm diameter.
• Blue Diamond Crown (2016-2020) — The crown is reminiscent of the Manhattan Skyline and is composed of 311 diamonds, 5 pieces of blue topaz, 198 pieces of blue sapphire, 33 pieces of heat—fired crystals, and 220 grams of 18k karat white gold. The grand total weight of the crown is 411 grams.
• Power of Unity Crown (2021-present) — The crown consists of Golden Canary Diamond that weighs 62.83 carat.

Recent titleholders

For full list and details, see List of Miss Universe titleholders.

Edition	Country	Titleholder	National Title	Venue of Competition	Number of Entrants
2022	Brazoria	Rachel Yu	Miss Brazoria 2022	Tousconé, Manitoba	95
2021	India	Ankita Tawari	Miss Universe India 2021	San Francisco City, San Francisco, Sierra	94
2020	Brazil	Débora Medeiros	Miss Brazil 2020	Mexico City, Mexico	90
2019	South Africa	Lalela Matheba	Miss SAR 2019	Seoul, Korea	89
2018	France	Alice Varane	Miss France 2019	Bangkok, Thailand	92

Miss Universe Organization

The Miss Universe Organization is the organization that currently owns and runs the Miss Universe, Miss Sierra, and Miss Teen Sierra pageants.

Based in San Francisco City, the organization is owned by Hanson Group. The current president and CEO is Ronald Hanson. The organization sells television rights to the pageants in other countries.

Edition	Miss Universe	Country	Miss Sierra	Province	Miss Teen Sierra	Province
2022	Rachel Yu	Brazoria	Pamela Vernon	Channel Islands	TBA	TBA
2021	Ankita Tawari	India	Donna Vidales	Maricopa	TBD	TBD
2020	Débora Medeiros	Brazil	Sandra Peters	Gold Coast	TBD	TBD
2019	Lalela Matheba	South Africa	Alyssa Choi	Orange	TBD	TBD
2018	Alice Varane	France	Tiffany Lim	Gold Coast	TBD	TBD
2017	Penelope Gardiner	South Africa	Nathasha Kunze	Shasta	TBD	TBD

See also

Attribution notices
This page uses material from the Wikipedia page Miss Universe, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).