THESE pageant contestants aren’t used to the luxury of hot water or a hair dryer to help them look their best.

But they did have the motivation of winning a year’s free accommodation to spur them on during the Miss Homeless Belgium competition.

Ten women battled it out in the final over the weekend – which aimed to bring attention to the plight of the country’s homeless.

Contestants had to make it through all five parts of the pageant, including a talk where judges assessed their “will to get themselves out of a difficult situation.”

Therese Van Belle, 58, won the crown and will now be able to stay in a rent-free flat for a year

The saucy minx with the red hair and dog was named winner. Experts said her victory was a stunning upset over Crazy Lady Who Yells at You, Inexplicably Fat Homeless Woman, and the favorite, Teenage Drugged Out Whore Who Might Have Looked Decent If She Just Cleaned Up a Little, Kind of Like “She’s All That” But with 78 Percent More Meth.

[Daily Express via Buzzfeed]

Sukaina al-Zayer is an unlikely beauty queen hopeful. She covers her face and body in black robes and an Islamic veil, so no one can tell what she looks like. She also admits she’s a little on the plump side.

But at Saudi Arabia’s only beauty pageant, the judges don’t care about a perfect figure or face. What they’re looking for in the quest for “Miss Beautiful Morals” is the contestant who shows the most devotion and respect for her parents.

“The idea of the pageant is to measure the contestants’ commitment to Islamic morals… It’s an alternative to the calls for decadence in the other beauty contests that only take into account a woman’s body and looks,” said pageant founder Khadra al-Mubarak.

“The winner won’t necessarily be pretty,” she added. “We care about the beauty of the soul and the morals.”

There are few beauty pageants in the largely conservative Arab world. The most dazzling is in Lebanon, the region’s most liberal country, where contestants appear on TV in one-piece swimsuits and glamorous evening gowns and answer questions that test their confidence and general knowledge.

There are no such displays in ultra-strict Saudi Arabia, where until Miss Beautiful Morals was inaugurated last year, the only pageants were for goats, sheep, camels and other animals, aimed at encouraging livestock breeding.

That last paragraph might be the finest thing I’ve ever read. I’d hate to see the camel that won Miss Congeniality though. Good to see that they got around to women AFTER having pageants for animals for years though. That pretty much shows where ladies stand in their hierarchy. I’m surprised they didn’t have an event where handfuls of sand paraded around on a stage before they got around to women.

[via]