Amidst the ongoing controversy surrounding Miss Texas R’Bonney Gabriel’s win at the Miss USA pageant, a former Miss World pageant contest, Leilani McConney has levied some shocking allegations against Priyanka Chopra and her big beauty pageant win in 2000.
The former Miss Barbados, now a YouTuber, shared her thoughts on the allegations that the beauty pageant was rigged and that Miss Texas had a biased win due to the unfair advantage of favouritism from the organisers and sponsors.
While investigations are currently underway, Leilani detailed all the “favoritism” and bias shown towards Priyanka at the pageant that was sponsored by an Indian broadcasting network.
“I literally went through the same thing at Miss World. “Me, I went through that,” McConney said while sharing photos and screenshots of the news snippets.
“I was Miss Barbados and I went to Miss World, and the year I went, Miss India won,” she said and went on to narrate, “Mind you, Miss India had won the previous year.” The sponsor was also Zee TV, an Indian cable station. They sponsored the entire Miss World pageant. “Our sashes had Zee TV, and then our country.”
Recalling the pattern of favoritism shown towards Priyanka, she said that the actress passed the swimsuit round ‘in a dress’. “Priyanka Chopra was the only person who was allowed to keep her sarong on. Apparently, she was using some skin tone cream to even out her skin tone, but it was still splotchy. I’m not saying that it was a bleaching cream; it was a skin-tone cream. And it didn’t work, so she didn’t want to remove her sarong. “So, during the actual judgment, she’s literally in a dress,” she said.
“If you’re a contestant in a pageant and somebody favours you, what will you do about it? Why wouldn’t you go along with it,” she asked.
She even claimed that PeeCee was ‘unlikeable’ and that she was ‘not nice’. In her video she even claimed that the bias extended to everything she did, including having meals delivered to her room, solo press calls and even photo shoots that “Nobody else in the Asian region, nobody else was ever called for.”
McConney also claimed that Priyanka had photoshoots done by the beach even before she won the pageant. “Meanwhile, we’re all grouped together in this sandpit…” she said.
Among the many things, she also claimed that the designer who designed Chopra’s gown designed the outfits for all other contestants as well, but said that while theirs ‘fit like crap’, “Her gown was immaculate.”
Leilani also revealed that the contestants walked off the stage to protest the unfairness when Priyanka was ‘eventually crowned the winner’.
“At Miss World, everyone knew that Priyanka Chopra was going to win and that it was rigged,” she said.
The video surprisingly won the support of the internet with many former beauty pageant contestants citing similar behaviour. Other netizens even extended their gratitude saying, “Thank you so much for this.”
Another said, “It has always been obvious that these pageants are rigged. It is sad that the true, lovely and accomplished beauties never win!”
Another said, “This is so interesting, and you explain it all so well.”
There were others also who said that her video came 22 years too late. A netizen acknowledged her video and also pointed out how Chopra kicked up a controversy by giving a wrong answer to her Miss World winning question to name the woman she considered to be the most successful woman living in the world today. Priyanka named Mother Teresa, who had passed away three years prior to the pageant.
( curtesy times of India)
