Beauty With a Purpose

I appeal to all Beauty Contest Winners who are not just pretty faces!
Beauty With a Purpose
Miss World Canada, Anastasia Lin at the international premiere of the documentary "Hard to Believe," in Vienna, Nov. 1, 2015. (Courtesy of Anastasia Lin)
The Reader's Turn
11/10/2015
Updated:
7/9/2020

Dear Editor,

I appeal to all Beauty Contest Winners who are not just pretty faces!

When I first read about this beauty contest “Miss World” for beauty with a purpose, I felt at last people would recognize that beauty contests are not only for women who have pretty faces but for women of integrity who stand up for real issues and can be role-models for our young generations, helping us remold the future with hope to become better people in a kinder world.

In 1956, I was crowned “Welland County Centennial Queen.” The next day, they needed the crown and robe for a theater production so I returned them and realized there was more to it than surface things.

The title awakened in me an inner confidence to sometimes go where others dared not go.

I admire “Miss World Canada” Anastasia Lin’s honest and bold stand. I feel she is truly “being a voice for the voiceless.”

Anastasia’s stand reminds me of my own. The persecution of Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, has been ongoing for 16 years. I know it personally, because the leader of the Communist Party in 1999, Jiang Zemin, officially announced to crush Falun Gong on my birthday—July 20.

When the news came that nine female bodies were found in a shallow grave, beaten to death, and that they were practitioners of Falun Gong, I stayed for nine days and nights in front of the Chinese consulate to appeal for help to stop this brutality against this gentle practice that I believe in, too, and to be a voice and a presence for those women, so others could know and their suffering would not be in vain.

Other practitioners of Falun Gong and I have appealed around the world for 16 years.

We have also now become “voices that cannot be heard”! I admire Anastasia’s young awareness!

Once again I appeal to the Canadian government. You did not stop China’s persecution of Falun Gong and now China is persecuting Canada—making this “Miss World” pageant into an embarrassing joke!

Will the pageant crown the new winner as “Miss World except Canada”?

Connie J. Chipkar Otisville, N.Y.