Roja Heydarpour
The latest newly crowned Miss Universe, Stefania Fernandez-an excellent 5’11” Venezuelan charm having a shoulder long enough so you can charm a beneficial flamingo-is pretty much the biggest package in her own household nation best today. Fernandez’s giddy coronation to the August 23 was spotted because of the 75 percent of your own Venezuelan tv listeners (more this new percentage of American people just who noticed this year’s Awesome Pan). Last times, Fernandez try known inside a four-time, This is your Lives-concept special into Venevision; whenever she generated a supplying of 1 away from the woman crowns during the a church in Caracas, she are almost stampeded because of the a passionate mob.
However, while the Fernandez arranged because of good month’s property value congratulatory phone phone calls, she noticed you to definitely unique voice is missing: Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s chairman. When Fernandez met all of us from the Skip Universe head office within the New york last week, she had been awaiting Hugo.
Bryan Curtis
“I do not believe people in a different way out of him, maybe not calling me personally,” Fernandez said. She sounded upset but is using their pageant look.
Chavez’s inability to name Fernandez wasn’t a simple faux jamais. Chavez, a good socialist, hates beauty pageants. In a good example of exactly how pop-people obsessions can be thwart his iron fist, Venezuela possess indexed Este Comandante’s disapproval immediately after which continued to make aside a roster away from beauty champions-four Skip Market and you can Skip Industry champions since 1991. The fresh Venezuelan charm industry, and its particular charm queens, exists inside a variety of diplomatic limbo. Fernandez was crowned when you look at the August by Dayana Mendoza, some other Venezuelan who was brand new 2008 Miss Market. Chavez didn’t telephone call Mendoza, both.
To possess a beneficial jilted beauty queen, Fernandez, the current Skip World, was taking pleasuring in it tremendously. Whenever we came across, she was sporting a yellow container better and dark trousers and giggling while the she swiveled back-and-forth so you’re able to their interpreter. “I found myself on the six, when you look at the 1996, as i saw my personal very first Skip Universe pageant,” she said. It was the fresh new wonderful, pre-Chavez age of Venezuelan pageantry, in the event the nation named the county-had oils tankers shortly after 
beauty queens. While the a young Fernandez watched, Miss Venezuela Alicia Machado turned this new homegrown winner in order to become Skip Universe. “I remember I happened to be most taken incidentally girls modeled its gowns,” Fernandez said, “meaning that I become acting my mother’s dresses around the home.”
Bryan Curtis
“I do not believe one in another way out-of him, perhaps not calling me personally,” Fernandez told you. She sounded troubled but is putting on her pageant laugh.
Chavez turned into president inside 1999 and you can first started their familiar tirades up against Yankee imperialism and you can materialistic excesses instance surgery treatment. But charm pageants, and therefore appeared to embody one another (Skip Market are owned by Donald Trump), turned out larger than this new president. This new Miss Venezuela pageant ‘s the country’s higher-ranked Tv series just about any season. Since the Miami Herald detailed, cosmetic surgery possess boomed significantly less than Chavez, which have people who are only fifteen searching for breast implants. Venezuelans don’t check out charm pageants with-rating you to definitely for Chavez-an effective Yankee’s ironic withdrawal. “None of the enforce here,” told you Francisco Toro, writer of your site Caracas Chronicles. “Nobody keeps any sense it is something apart from wicked extremely.”
When Fernandez is actually named Venezuela’s most incredible woman, inside , it absolutely was clear she encountered the possibility to overcome this new world. She was given over to Osmel Sousa, anyone deal with away from Venezuela’s beauty industry. Sousa is sometimes entitled Henry Higgins to own his capacity to grab beautiful ladies and “make them finest.” Sousa taught Fernandez during the his red villa towards north end out of Caracas. He is a keen unabashed fan off cosmetic plastic surgery; the guy wants to state, “It is not a characteristics tournament.”
Whenever she visited the latest academy, Fernandez are 17 and, Sousa told me, a timid, unworldly nation lady. Fernandez and exacting Sousa found present a type of connection. “He could be very easy to get along with if you do everything because of the book he tells you to do,” she said. Sousa’s daily program provided kinds on the English, decorum, hair and you will cosmetics, manner, the art of strolling. “We setup a feeling of maturity once the I happened to be on my own without my personal parents,” Fernandez told united states. “That has been everything i got the most from the training-We mature.”
Sousa try completely aware of your aesthetic gulf of mexico ranging from Venezuela’s reigning charm queen and its chairman. “In the event that politics shows up, I let them know to alter the niche,” he has got said. However, that will not usually work. Which spring season, whenever you are Chavez is actually denouncing Guantanamo Bay while the America’s “unhappy jail,” Dayana Mendoza, who was simply then reigning Miss Market, paid a good diplomatic stop by at Guantanamo. She penned a gushing web log entryway: “I didn’t must get-off. It was such as a soothing lay… The water…try soooo gorgeous!” This new article vanished on the internet immediately after.
However, Chavez is absolutely nothing if not a cagey populist, and you may anything got a startling turn last week when Fernandez generated the girl go back to Venezuela. Maybe it had been their entrance in the the latest Miss Venezuela pageant certainly shedding rose petals, maybe it had been new nonstop exposure on television shows instance Awesome Sabado Sensacional, nevertheless the chairman had a positive change off heart. Last Wednesday, the guy produced an extremely later part of the phone call so you’re able to Fernandez to convey his congratulations. “Exactly what a pleasant joy to talk to Stefania Fernandez!” the guy informed a television route. He called Fernandez “the newest girl out of Venezuela” and you can applauded this lady work on Helps sense. What took so long? “I became within the Russia when she obtained,” Chavez told you, instead unconvincingly. But score you to definitely to possess democracy and you will pageantry. From inside the a related tale, Stefania Fernandez told you their notice once the Skip Market would be worldwide connections.
Bryan Curtis was an elder editor within Every day Monster. His tale on the his grandfather’s softball community is in the Better Western Recreations Composing regarding 2009.