Last night, TV host Tony Khalifeh, questioned the Director of Promotion in the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism, Mona Fares about the controversy surrounding Miss Lebanon caused by the low percentage of beautiful candidates.
When confronted with facts, Mona bluntly admitted that Danielle Salamouny, the Lebanese World Supermodel title holder, was denied entry to Miss Lebanon twice despite her outstanding beauty: In 2011 because she had lip augmentation, and the following year for being the winner of the international contest, ‘World Supermodel’; I think these are very lame excuses!
I doubt that Danielle had augmented her lips, we had seen her teenage photos and she still looks the same, but even if she did, what about contestants of previous years who had a full face make over and looked plastic, e.g. first runner-up of Miss Lebanon 2010, Daniella Bou-Gharios? Also, is the World Supermodel contest of Fiji as important as Miss Universe and Miss World? I don’t think so, in fact World Supermodel had only 17 participants. The bottom line is that Mona Fares and the committee accept at times candidates that are not pretty enough and well qualified while rejecting girls who could easily bring home an international victory.
Mona also said they don’t accept ‘liberal’ girls, and that they search for your personal information online to make sure you didn’t lie on your application or whether you have racy pictures of yourself posted somewhere. Essentially, you have to be very honest about your bio, and take the casting as a job interview, watch your manners, be self-conscious and soft-spoken, otherwise you will be denied if you lied or came across as lively, care free and ‘loose’ – Unfortunately, Fares doesn’t know that for a girl to get noticed by international jury and advance to the finals she needs to be vivacious and energetic. A rigid, stiff Miss Lebanon (jemdeh) will fail to draw attention to her even if she’s very beautiful!
So dear readers and pageant fans, now you finally know why you don’t always see that many gorgeous women competing for the Miss Lebanon title, not necessarily because they don’t trust the pageant, but because the acceptance criteria represents very specific and sometimes impossible conditions that must be met!
If you haven’t seen Mona Fares before, watch this short interview of her in English (below) where she described Lebanon’s characteristics of tourism.
This article was re-edited on: 03/09/2012.
More on this topic coming up soon, in the meantime, your thoughts and comments are welcome.
Look I don’t support this dinosaur of a woman but she does have a point. Yes a beauty pageant winner should be all natural (no work done whatsoever), should have no prior obligations from previous titles and should be poised in how she present herself to people. Unfortunately that means excluding a lot of Lebanese girls!
And by the way, I could swear that Gabrielle Bou Rached had work done on her face. Her features just looked too disproportionate! Can you confirm?
3/4 of the miss lebanons have their whole faces done Rabih… wake up and smell the coffee
Anabella Hilal did a plastic surgery for her nose prior to Miss Lebanon 2005; she used to look unattractive with her big nose before. So well done, Anabella! If she had kept herself natural without a nose job, I’m sure she wouldn’t have placed in Miss World 2006 (because really her big nose was repulsive to the viewer before Miss Lebanon).
Natural? guys if you wanna score internationally look at the big players! Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, USA, all of them have work done! A beauty queen should be BEAUTIFUL, with a natural look but not necessarily natural!
all what Madame ugly fat short Mona and LBC care about is choosing the girl, whose parents pay the most Amount of money for her to win, or the owner of the pageant to get laid by the new miss lebanon… almost all miss lebanons are ridiculously ugly, laim , and disgusting
Danielle is very pretty for sure but I think she got her share of fame and she already represented Lebanon and had dozens of interviews and attention; if she was accepted I doubt that she would have won because the appointed jury will immediately recognize her and may want to give another girl a chance which I find fair!
not a good enough excuse! It’s not about giving a chance for a less famous girl! Lara Dutta won Miss intercontinental before competing in Miss India and she still won the national crown and the international one as well! Shame for denying a deserving girl while accepting mediocre ones under this excuse!
As if Mona Fares didn’t have any plastic surgery done for herself. What a corrupt politician she is, and how much she deserves to be overthrown from our Ministry of Tourism.
So, the bottom line is that there will be no repeated pageant victory for Lebanon such as Georgina Rizk’s at any given point of time until some political revolution takes place to oust and to replace the entire existing corrupt confessionalist government.
According to Mona Fares, there are beautiful girls competing this year though.
It’s the same Mona who was responsible for choosing the girls in the past years? of course she thinks her choices are “Beautiful”!
What is going on? The pageant didn’t even start and they are already playing games?! LOL! Where is Rola Saad?!!!!
Didn’t Lara Dutta win the Miss Intercontinental crown before competing in Miss India, winning the crown and then winning Miss Universe!?! ENOUGH STUPIDITY already!
that’s bullshiit ! nothing has changed ! and Danielle is better than the 3 already selected girls !! what the hell is going on ! they should go check miss venezuela ! they do at least 3-4 surgeries..i don’t say it’s right ! but moa should wake up ! Miss universe already accepted a transgender !! so we’re still arguing about plastic surgeries !!
Your wrong Danielle is not better than the 3 girls already selected,Marie-Lou Nahas is more attractive,and i heared that she’s well educated,so good luck to her
They are right by not accepting Daniella! Lebanon needs a fresh new face and hope for girls that they don’t have to be famous and all botoxed up to make it somewhere in life! That’s why everyone feels the need to get plastic surgeries to begin with because the only real role models they have are singers who shit out botox! thugh i do agree with dasdasd…it’s true spanish countries do plastic surgeries but in most cases it looks natural and when it doesnt it really doesn’t help them in National beauty pageants
she’s pretty and sexyyy for sure but im afraid that she is not the beauty queen type , maybe too sexy ? and lips are surely fake
Every pageant should have a sex kitten in it, Nicole Ghazal and Lamitta were too sexy and reached the finals, whether the sexy girl wins or not is up to the judges, but denying a girl entry to the pageant just because she is sexy is politically incorrect!
goo danielle you must entre the compition we don’t a new miss lebanon la yara khouly mikeal or rafah abdalah or martin andraos we need a new georgena rizk plzzzzzzz
I think she should try to apply again for the third time next year and they would accept her. (la2ann el teilteh seibteh)
Don’t give up, Danielle! and good things come to those who wait (as you said).