TORONTO (AP) — The first-ever transgender contestant to
compete in the Miss Universe Canada pageant strutted the runway Saturday night,
making it to the penultimate round before losing her bid to win the title.
Jenna Talackova, 23, competed with 61 contestants and was
among the final 12 contestants before failing to make the final five in the
glitzy pageant.
Sahar Biniaz, 26, claimed the crown and advances to the
international Miss Universe competition in December.
Talackova, who was one of four contestants named Miss
Congeniality, was born a male and underwent a sex change four years ago. The
Vancouver, British Columbia, native was initially denied entry to Canada's
pageant because she was not born female. Donald Trump, who runs the Miss
Universe Organization, subsequently overruled that decision last month.
The 6-foot-1 (1.8-meter-1 centimeter) blond beauty, who
towered over her fellow contenders while competing in the bikini and formal
wear contests, garnered most of the attention Saturday night, soliciting loud
cheering and howls each time she appeared on stage.
Talackova's involvement in the pageant has drawn
international attention since being denied entry and hiring high-profile lawyer
Gloria Allred to represent her in her battle to be readmitted.
The rules of the contest run by Trump's New York
City-based organization say entrants must be "naturally born"
females. But shortly after Talackova announced a news conference in Los Angeles
with Allred, the Miss Universe Organization said in a statement on its Canada
website that Talackova can compete "provided she meets the legal gender
recognition requirements of Canada, and the standards established by other
international competitions."
Miss Universe organizers have not elaborated on the
statement.
Allred said during Saturday's pageant that Talackova
shouldn't feel too disappointed.
"She's still a winner as far as I'm concerned,"
Allred said during an intermission. "She won an 'herstoric' civil rights
victory and that I think is frankly more important than anything, any victory
she would win, even representing Miss Canada."
Talackova is the child of a Czechoslovakian father and
aboriginal Canadian mother. She has said that she knew early on she was in the
wrong body. Her change of gender was hardly a secret before the event because
she had competed in the 2010 Tiffany Miss International Queen Competition for
transgendered and transsexual women in Pattaya, Thailand. In a video interview
for that pageant, she said she had lived her life as a female since age 4,
began hormone therapy at 14 and changed her sex at 19.
The controversy surrounding her participating in Miss
Universe Canada erupted this spring after a blogger recognized her from the
transsexual beauty contest in Thailand and posted about it.
Miss Universe publicity director Brenda Mendoza has said
transgender competitors are now welcome at all of its pageants around the
world.
But she says it's being left to the individual franchises
to determine if the recent policy change is carried out.
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