She’s crying, and how could it be otherwise? On November 18, in San Salvador, El Salvador, Sheynnis Palacios was officially elected the most beautiful woman in the world, Miss Universe. At 23, this rising audiovisual star in Nicaragua offers his country its very first crown. Incidentally, it also allows Latin America to win its fifteenth world title, and thus to beat North America, winner fourteen times since the creation of the competition in 1952.
To materialize his victory, Sheynnis Palacios was presented with a resplendent scarf. Question: where does this tradition come from among the Misses? The answer is to be found in the United States. During the first edition of the Miss America pageant, in 1921, in Atlantic City, the eight candidates were almost all adorned with a sash. The organizers, although little interested in feminist issues, thus adopted the codes set by the suffragette activists, who used their sash to identify themselves and express their ideas without breaking dress codes.
At the end of the competition, this ceremonial scarf was placed on an equally spectacular dress, notably thanks to a shower of pearls covering the bodice. Another question: Were the pearls real or fake? To be sure, it would be necessary to perform the bite test. A real pearl, rough and irregular, is cold and hard to the touch. Conversely, an artificial pearl is warm, rather soft to the touch and completely smooth.
The woman in the back, who gives her scarf to Sheynnis Palacios, also shines brightly. Her dress is covered in rhinestones, which gives us the opportunity to let out a powerful cocorico. Because this crystal imitating a gem owes its name to a French jeweler, in this case the Strasbourg resident Georges Frédéric Strass. Although he did not truly develop the principle of rhinestones, he ensured its popularity through numerous creations in the mid-18th century.
Everything shines in this image, even the nails. Miss and presenter are equipped here with spectacular false nails, allowing us a bit of history. It was in 1934 that an American dentist named Maxwell Lappe created the first artificial nails for his nail-biting patients. But it was in the 1950s that another dentist, named Fred Slack Jr, made a thriving business of it, lengthening the nails of actresses and requiring the installation of false capsule nails among beauticians.
