Beauty Queen Crown Being Stripped

Should it be okay for organizations to strip the crowns of previous winners of beauty pageants due to problems they may have with the law? Some of you may have already heard about Laura Zuniga, a 23-year-old Mexican beauty queen who was recently arrested with several alleged gunmen. She and seven men were arrested just before midnight on December 22nd at a military checkpoint, just outside of Guadalajara. They were driving in a truck with guns and ammunition in it. Zuniga may have to forfeit several of the pageant crowns she won in 2008 because of this situation. Is that really fair? Nobody is perfect, especially young people. The organizations awaiting the outcome of her arrest should absolutely not consider taking any action against her.

When a championship has already been granted to a competitor and later it is revealed that the crowned competitor did not follow rules and regulations, that competitor should be stripped of their crown. In Laura Zuniga's situation, it has nothing to do with her bending the rules to win the competition. Had this been an issue of cheating, talks of stripping her crown would be warranted, but for any of these organizations to have anything to say outside of embarrassment for her, just isn't fair to the young ladies who compete in their competitions. Life happens to people who live it.

The way the world will stereotype people is so far off from who they really are its ridiculous. There are executives who sit at the top of some of the most successful businesses in the world, who at one point in their lives, knowingly rubbed shoulders and elbows with criminals on daily basis. So just because a girl has won a beauty pageant does not mean that her life is perfect. In fact, it's almost a guarantee that her life is far from perfect. If organizations judged contestants on their everyday lives it would not be called a beauty pageant. Laura Zuniga has all of the attributes that those pageants were looking for, otherwise she never would have been crowned.

Laura Zuniga won Miss Sinaloa 2008 and the Hispanoamerican Queen beauty contest. According to a statement made by Lupita Jones, the national director of Nuestra Belleza Mexico, a pageant Zuniga placed third in, various contest objectives are to show the beauty, value, and intelligence in their competitors. Obviously Zuniga is everything these organizations look for in their competitors and should not be penalized for who she associates with or things that she may be involved with outside of these contests. If the issue was regarding a possible disqualification of her from contests that weren't yet over, that would be fair, but she already won her crowns, fair and square. Don't get me wrong, I do not condone criminal activity in any way, but stripping someone of something that they have already earned just isn't right.