Miss Easterval 2013 Justlyn Ollivierre will never realise her dream of following in the footsteps of her sister, Casynella Ollivierre, and win the Miss SVG and Miss Carival crowns.
Well, she will never become Miss SVG for as long as the criterion that contestants must not have given birth remains.
Ollivierre, 19, who won the Miss Easterval title for Mayreau on her 18th birthday last year, was dethroned after it became known that she was pregnant.
She declined comment when I-Witness News contacted her on Wednesday, but said that she has a 5-month-old daughter.
A member of the Easterval committee told I-Witness News on the weekend that the time of the birth suggests that Ollivierre was pregnant when she won the pageant on April 1, 2013.
If this were in fact the case, the committee member further told I-Witness News, it was not clear whether Ollivierre had known that she was pregnant.
Ollivierre, who was Miss Photogenic, also won the Talent and Swimwear categories of the show and told reporters that she wanted to follow in the footsteps of her sister, who won the Miss SVG and Miss Carival titles in 2005.
“I am feeling really ecstatic. It shocked me, because I never expected this,” the St. Joseph’s Convent Kingstown graduate told reporters after her crowning last year.
She said she had come to the pageant “to have fun.
“This is my first pageant. I have never been on stage, so this shocked my whole world. Today is my birthday and this is the best birthday gift I have ever had,” Ollivierre told reporters last year.
Ollivierre said she had taken a break before going to college so that she could enter the show.
“I took a break just for this pageant before I go to college, because I was planning to go to this pageant all my life.”
Ollivierre said that she would have begun studying business in September 2013, but I-Witness News understands that she is not a student at the post-secondary institution.
After Ollivierre was dethroned, First Runner-up, Miss Barbados Heidi Barrow became Miss Easterval 2013 and made her final walk in that role at the show on Sunday.
Whatever happened to ‘Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder’? Or does it depend on who is doing the beholding? I used to enjoy these so-called beauty shows that objectified women until stories like this helped to cement my belief that these shows should not be continued. Beauty is not a single virgin woman in a skimpy outfit. Having a kid does not diminish one’s beauty, it enhances it.
With Rihanna gracing the cover of a magazine giving her the title of ‘Most beautiful person’, it’s time to ask what exactly is beauty these days.
I-Witness news need to it gets facts straight and stop letting people believe a lie.
Thank you Carlos Walcott! I’m first bothered that her pregnancy is being reported on. Furthermore, these dated policies indirectly show disdain on the great single mothers whom I’ve admired and respected in this country. It supports this saddening view: this child you bear will forever be a symbol of shame, and impurity, not love and sacrifice.
A stupid story, if ever I saw one. Utterly stupid. A total hachet job on that young Vincentian women. Who writer, and anonymous ‘Committee member’ could be so vitriolically BITTER, ENVIOUS AND JEALOUSLY SPITEFUL TOWARD THIS FELLOW HUMAN BEING and crowned Easterval contestant/monarch?
A nasty piece, beginning the moniker of journalism. A big let-down for IWN-SVG. Fire the substandard [staff?] writer. Immoral, unethical, and quite likely illegal and slanderous/libelous in devious parts.
What a travesty of IWN public relations and professionalism.
Steve Huggins
A wannabe journalistic OMBUDSMAN.