Bikini round now removed from Miss World pageant

The Miss World contest, which has been an annual feature since 1951, will no longer feature a swimsuit round in their competition, the organisation's chairwoman Julia Morley has said.

The owners of the Miss World pageant have announced that there will be no swimsuit round in next year's competition, reports dailymail.co.uk.

"I really ... don't need to see women just walking up and down in bikinis. It doesn't do anything for the woman. And it doesn't do anything for any of us," Morley said in an interview with Elle magazine.

"I don't care if someone has a bottom two inches bigger than someone else's. We are really not looking at her bottom. We are really listening to her speak," she added.

Miss World was founded in 1951 by Morley's late husband Eric and from then on, there has been a contest dedicated exclusively to swimwear. But recently, she has come to feel that the swimsuit round is unnecessary.

The result was that the pageant decided not to broadcast the bikini portion of the show in recent years, thereby judging the girls privately in front of a small panel instead.

Now they have planned to do away with the swimsuit round altogether.

"We don't want to just make them feel like they are walking bodies, you know," said Morley, adding that she is hoping to set her competition apart from other pageants by emphasising brains and personality over physical beauty.

One step was the creation of Beauty with a Purpose segment that started in 1974. In this round, the contestants are judged on their most relevant and important charity project in her nation.

Rolene Strauss of South Africa was crowned the 64th Miss World winner in London Dec 14 and it marked the final event featuring contestants wearing bikinis.