Mexican beauty queen loses crown after gaining six pounds

Cynthia de la Vega, the nineteen-year-old runner up in the Miss Mexico pageant, has been stripped of her title and her opportunity to compete in the Miss World pageant. She claims she was relieved of her crown due to a six-pound weight gain.

Pageant coordinators don't outright admit they gave her the boot over the weight issue, instead saying that, "it was a lack of dedication and discipline," and "She did not comply with the recommendations and goal agreed upon for her preparation." Right. We get it. The goal was losing six pounds.

I'm always somewhat conflicted when I hear a story about how some pageant contestant was stripped of her title based on some flimsy excuse. Obviously, I feel outraged because it's terrible to take away someone's title because of something as absurd as gaining six pounds. But isn't it the competition in which weight and appearance are the fundamental criteria that's really so terrible? Sure, you can try to shift the standard of beauty by a few degrees, but you're still existing in a world where women are paraded across a stage and judged on their physical appearance. You know that when you enter yourself into a beauty pageant.