Female Beauty

The former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, who almost lost her Miss Universe title because she gained weight, signed a contract with Playboy to pose naked in a February edition to be sold throughout the Americas. Machado was born in Maracay in the state of Aragua, Venezuela, on December 6, 1976. She is the daughter of a Cuban father and Spanish mother. Despite not being a major favorite for Miss Venezuela, Machado defied all predictions and went all the way to win the Miss Universe 1996 pageant in Las Vegas. She was the fourth woman from Venezuela to win the Miss Universe crown. She won the Miss Venezuela 1995 pageant representing Yaracuy.

A few months after winning the tittle of Miss Universe, Alicia Machado started to gain weight, to which she atributed to the ‘wisdom teeth’ she had to take out and so made her look a little chubby. Nevertheless, she kept gaining weight until she reached about 12 kilos (about 20lbs) overweight. The organizers of Miss Universe though of taking the crown from here since she was representing the most beautiful and perfect woman in the world, and so overweight didn’t make happy the board of directors. January 1997, Mr. Trump, the president of Miss Universe humiliated her making her workout in front of photographers. She argued about this but, at the end she had to do it because she was an ‘employee of the Miss Universe Organization’

Among the controversies that have followed her career was the breakup of her engagement to major-league baseball star Bobby Abreu in May 2005. Abreu, an idol in the Latin world and an icon in Venezuela, split with Machado after she was filmed having sex with another man on La Granja (”the farm”), a Spanish program similar to Big Brother. They had been planning to marry in December.

By appearing on the cover of the Mexican edition of Playboy magazine for the February issue of 2006, Alicia became the first and the only Miss Universe to do so. She dedicated her being photographed ‘como Dios la trajo al mundo’ (as God brought me into the world) to Donald Trump who called her an “eating machine” when she gained weight after winning the beauty pageant.
Venezuela has won four Miss Universe, five Miss World and four Miss International crowns in total, more than any other country. Miss Venezuela made the Miss Universe pageant’s 10 finalists for an uninterrupted 20-year span until 2003.

Here are the results of Miss Universe 1996:

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA- May 17,1996
Miss Universe 1996: Miss Venezuela, Alicia Machado Fajardo
First Runner Up: Miss Aruba, Taryn Mansell
Second Runner Up: Miss Finland, Ololade (Lola) Odusoga

Finalists:
Miss Mexico, Vanessa Guzm¡n Niebla
Miss Russia, Ilmira Shamsutdinova
Miss U.S.A., Ali Landry

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 6th, 2006 at 10:20 am and is filed under Career, Fashion, Beauty, Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.