The path to success is often circuitous, filled with detours, wrong turnings, dead ends and log-jammed highways. Perseverance and a great desire to succeed are requisite. Where one starts off is sometimes far removed from where one arrives.

Sophia Loren was a mere fifteen-year-old when she stood in line with the other young girls hoping to win the glittering prize of Miss Italy in Rome 1950. The Miss Italy beauty contest was devised as a “pick-me-up” for the defeated and beleaguered Italian nation after the Second World War in 1946.

Many of those early Miss Italia winners and contestants became well known in Italy and abroad. In 1947 alone there were four contestants who later went on to Italian entertainment fame: Lucia Bose (the winner that year), Gianna Maria Canale (second place), Gina Lollobrigida (third), and Eleonora Rossi Drago (fourth).

In 1950 the competition was broadcast live on radio. This was the year Miss Loren made her appearance under the name Sofia Scicolone.  However, the teenage beauty was considered “too provocative” to win the contest and the judging panel awarded Miss Loren the specially devised title of “Miss Eleganza 1950.”

Maria Bugliari won the title of Miss Italy but her success was small potatoes when compared to the long and brilliant career Sophia Loren achieved as an actress from then on.
 

 

 
More early photos of Sophia Loren, after the jump…

 
The spectacle of the modern beauty pageant is creepy enough as it is, and the irony of a toad like Donald Trump assessing women for their desirability is not lost on me. Still, most beauty pageants at least maintain a façade of depth. Sure, they uphold weird standards of virginal purity, and yes, there’s a swimsuit “competition,” but there are also talent contests, points for personality and everyone at least agrees to pretend that they’re aiming for scholarship programs.

Not so for this “Beautiful Eyes” contest held at a British holiday camp in 1958.

The women’s faces are covered below the eyes and their bodies are hidden below the neck, apparently to ensure the judges will properly isolate the single body part they’re supposed to be evaluating. As if that wasn’t already creepy enough, one judge—he’s a pervy looking motherfucker, too—actually walks down the line and handles the women’s faces like they were show dogs, eventually pulling down one woman’s veil to kiss her square on the mouth.

At least in the Miss America pageant you’re not expected to risk contracting oral herpes from one of the judges…
 

 
Not according to Kerry Campbell and her daughter Britney. who regularly has Botox injections and also gets “virgin” waxes even though she has not yet hit puberty. You know, ‘cos being 8 can be rough on your skin! From the UK’s Daily Mail:

California mum Kerry Campbell has come under fire after admitting she injects her young daughter Britney with Botox to get rid of ‘wrinkles’ that appear on the girl’s face when she smiles.

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Kerry also admitted to waxing her daughter in the name of pageant success.

‘They call it little fluffy hair,’ she said. ‘They get judged on all that stuff. It’s a tough world, the pageant world, I’m telling you. The kids are harsh.’
Eight-year-old Britney added: ‘I just don’t think it’s ladylike to have hair on your legs. I did that one time. It was super, super hard. It hurts.”

Thanks to Samantha Veal for the link, who would like to make it known that she is NOT a regular reader of the Daily Mail.