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Miss Italy contestants get the boot
Going conservative, Miss Italy officials have disqualified three contestants after provocative pictures of the models were found. The images were deemed too racy for the pageant. The pageant is to be held in Tuscany next week.
Three Miss Italy contestants have been shown the door after officials found pictures of the models in lingerie and posing provocatively.
Images of Alice Bellotto, 22, Tiziana Piergianni, 26, and Raffaella Modugno, 23 were too risque for pageant officials, reports Daily Mail.
Miss Veneto Bellotto, was booted after judges discovered images of her in a pink nightdress and another in denim hot pants and high heels.
Both images had the model posing suggestively, with one in which she has her legs splayed and is wearing very revealing hot pants.
"I'm really upset at being excluded from the contest. As far as I am concerned the photographs of me are tasteful and artistic. I'm a model it's what I do where is the problem?," Bellotto told Daily Mail, "My family know all about the pictures and are behind me 100 per cent. I will still watch the show - what's happened has happened in fact it has led to more work offers."
Judges found topless pictures of Miss Liguria and single mother, Tiziana Piergianni, too objectionable for the beauty pageant.
Miss Curvy Italy from Rome, Raffaella Modugno was shown the red card after pictures of her wearing lacy underwear and reclining on a sofa and posing provocatively surfaced.
Bellotto and Modugno were unavailable for comment.
"Regulation number eight clearly states that any contestant who has posed or is seen in a nude or provocative pose is excluded," the Daily Mail quoted a spokesman for Miss Italy as saying.
The pageant is to be held at Montecatini Terme in Tuscany next week.
It has garnered a fair share of protests and criticism, especially from feminists, for projecting women of Italy as sex objects.
In the past, Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida have been contestants at Miss Italy.
Pageant officials took some measures to shake off the pagean'ts misogynistic image, by removing regulations on vital statistics in 1990 and opening the contest to single mothers and married women in 1994.
But the contest ran into further controversy, four years ago, when judges asked contestants to pose with their backs turned so that their posteriors could help the judges decide and rate them better.
