That’s the headline straight from the Miss Tibet home page, and it means exactly what it says: the India-based competition received eight total applications, five confirmed, and four “withdrew at the last minute expressing various personal problems.” The automatic winner was Tenzin Yangzom, 23, who the pageant organizers hope will draw awareness to the plight of the Tibetan people by going on to international competitions.
For the organizers, lack of participant interest is a grave matter, if not also an unofficial pageant tradition of sorts: this is the fourth year a lone contestant has been crowned. “On our part,” writes pageant director Lobsang Wangyal on misstibet.com, “we have not given up, and will never give up, and hope that there will be more contestants in the next year’s pageant.”
—Max Zahn, Editorial Assistant