Miss Vietnam to participate in Miss World pageant
HANOI - The newly crowned Miss Vietnam will participate in next month's Miss World pageant for the first time, a pageant organizer said Wednesday.
Pham Thi Mai Phuong, a 17-year-old student from northern Haiphong, will join more than 100 other contestants at the international pageant to be held in Nigeria on Dec. 7, said Duong Xuan Nam, editor of Tien Phong (Vanguard), the organizer of the Miss Vietnam contest.
Phuong was crowned Miss Vietnam in the communist nation's first government-recognized pageant in September.
The Vanguard newspaper had sponsored beauty contests every other year since 1988, but without official recognition. The September event formally ended years of official ambivalence toward beauty contests.
The ruling Communist Party once disparaged beauty contests as a sign of capitalist decadence, but economic reforms over the last 15 years have opened Vietnam up to increased Western influence and loosened its cultural mores.
The Associated Press - November 5, 2002
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