Miss Wheelchair World’s changing view of pageants

A PSYCHOLOGY student from Belarus has been crowned Miss Wheelchair World in the first-ever edition of the beauty pageant.

“Fight your anxiety and fears,” 23-year-old Aleksandra Chichikova (pictured) said at the gala event held in Warsaw, Poland, at the weekend.

Lebohang Monyatsi from South Africa was the runnerup ahead of Poland’s Adrianna Zawadzinska in the first contest of its kind on a global scale, which brought together 24 women from 19 countries.

The goal of the contest was to “change the image of women in wheelchairs so they would not be judged solely by this attribute”, contest co-founder and jury president Katarzyna Wojtaszek-Ginalska said. The pageant organised by the Poland-based Only One Foundation also seeks to show that a wheelchair is a luxury in many parts of the world, she added.

The contestants were chosen either in national rounds or, in countries with no such pageants, by non-governmental organisations.

“Of course, a good look counts but we have focused especially on the personality of the girls,” Ms Wojtaszek-Ginalska.