Miss Tibet Contest – Dharamsala, Indien
Originally, the Miss Tibet Contest was considered a Western corruption: a distinctly non-Tibetan celebration. According to traditional Tibetan views, beauty comes from the inside, and cannot be measured by external characteristics or pageantry. There was always criticism that the participants walked down the catwalk in bikinis. But with the increasing number of applicants to participate—growing from one at its inception, to nine in 2017—the public interest and the recognition of the beauty contest increases too. The Miss Tibet Contest is intended on the one hand to emphasize the country's independence, and on the other hand, to give young women the chance to change, modernizing the traditional image of women in Tibetan culture.
