The Miss Italy beauty pageant recently affirmed its traditional stance by announcing its eligibility requirement for participants to be biologically female. This decision reflects the organization’s commitment to avoid engagement in transgender activism, maintaining its conventional framework.
Patrizia Mirigliani, the pageant’s Official Patron, voiced her concern about the tendency of other pageants resorting to what she considers “absurd” strategies to draw public attention. She emphasized that since Miss Italy’s inception, the rules have consistently necessitated contestants to be born women.
Miss Italy’s stance emerges following the Miss Netherlands contest naming a transgender male-to-woman, Rikki Valerie Kolle, as its winner for 2023. The decision engendered controversy and social media debates, with certain factions arguing against a trans woman’s participation in a women’s beauty pageant.
Kolle is now set to represent the Netherlands in the 2023 Miss Universe competition, interestingly owned by a transgender woman. The topic of trans participation in beauty pageants has incited discussions globally. Pageants like Miss USA have adopted an inclusive approach, hosting their first trans woman contestant in 2021. Conversely, the Miss United States of America beauty contest legally defended its right to exclude trans women as contestants in a 2022 U.S. appeals court ruling, upholding its traditional eligibility criteria.
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