Bikinis are not degrading, they give women confidence
SHE’S a passionate, hard-working nurse who loves helping her daddy with the cows around the farm — and as far from the ditzy ‘beauty queen’ stereotype as one could be.
The Miss Universe competition conjures up images of skimpy swimsuits and glamorous ball-gowns. So when competition organisers travelled to Buncrana in Donegal earlier this year for a video and photoshoot with the recently-crowned Miss Universe Ireland, Grainne Gallanagh, they were in for a bit of a surprise. Grainne — who finished in Europe’s top five and in the world’s top 20 at the glitzy competition in Thailand last week — met them in her wellies.
‘I didn’t get all dolled up, I was wearing my normal clothes and I just drove around the yard on the tractor and went off feeding the cows,’ laughs the 24-year-old. ‘There wasn’t anything “beauty queenie” about it. They were like: “Oh my God, this is so Irish.”’
Grainne’s farmer dad Patrick was thrilled with all the excitement.
‘Daddy was loving it,’ she says. ‘He thought it was great and couldn’t wait to see the farm on the TV. All the neighbours were talking about it. The contest wanted to get to know our back- ground, where we grew up and what kind of people we are. I love Donegal and I love home so I loved showing them a wee bit of it.’
There were plenty of tricolours fluttering at the show arena just outside Bangkok in Thailand when Grainne sashayed down the catwalks in various costumes, from full Cinderella to a yellow swimsuit.
Her parents Patricia, a retired school teacher, dad Patrick and two of her four sisters, as well as cousins Stephen from New York and Sean from Buncrana, all flew over.
Given the family had made it that far, the Gallaghans decided to continue their celebrations with a hop across to Australia — their first ever trip Down Under. Grainne’s older sister Jennifer, a health and safety officer, has been living in Perth for the past five years, and there’s cousins, aunts and uncles on both sides of the family there also.
Sadly, Grainne’s teenage sweetheart Ryan — a school fire and security officer, who she lives with in London — couldn’t make it to Thailand as the show clashed with a family wedding. But Grainne insists Ryan has been instrumental in her journey to the top of the universe.
‘I’d watched Miss Universe for years and always said I’d love to do it but never thought I would. Then last year I was on holidays with Ryan in Cape Verde and I was watching it on my phone and I told Ryan “I’m going to be there next year”,’ she says.
‘He really pushed me to go for it. Sometimes you need that push.’
Grainne was working as a nurse at the busy King’s Hospital in London before she was crowned Miss Universe Ireland at the Mansion House earlier this year and it’s been a whirlwind ever since. She’s a real homebird who always made sure to visit her parents once a month but the demands of her new role brought her home to Ireland most weekends doing events.
She also put her nursing career on hold for a while.
‘I’m lucky as nursing is so flexible so I was able to do bank shifts, working whenever you want, booking in shifts on a daily or weekly basis around other things that were going on,’ explains Grainne.
Not that she’s planning on hanging up her nurse’s uniform — quite the opposite, in fact.
Grainne reveals that, far from dreaming of being a successful model, the reason she entered Miss Universe was to further her true life’s passions — nursing and women’s health. She dreams of opening a women’s health clinic one day.
‘It feels to me that women’s health is not much of a priority in Irish society — we saw that with the cervical smear test scandal when Irish women’s trust was completely breached,’ says Grainne. ‘It got to where women didn’t want to get their cervical smearing done as they didn’t trust the results. That’s just heart-breaking to see. It’s not on.
‘I work with women every day and I want to help restore their trust in the health system. I thought I can use my platform to highlight womens’ health issues, to use my experience and knowledge to break down some taboos.’
One of five girls, Grainne points to her online social media platforms, such as Instagram, where she encourages her female followers to think and talk about their health.
‘I encourage women to go to the doctor, check themselves out, do cervical screening, check their breasts. I put up certain symptoms and the girls take note — they tell me it’s helpful. One women read up on symptoms I put out on endometriosis and then she got diagnosed.
‘I try to shine a light on these issues and get rid of the stigma and not to be ashamed to talk about periods or the menopause or whatever.
‘Women need to embrace our health, not shy away from it. So many areas of women’s health are ignored or aren’t given priority.
‘People might say this competition and women’s health might not go hand in hand but it’s been a good mix for me,’ continues Grainne, taking the question right out of my mouth. ‘The glam is great but it’s not really all about that or what you’re wearing. It’s who you are as a person and what you’re passionate about. It’s a great platform to use.’
Growing up in Donegal, and later at college in Letterkenny, Grainne never dreamed of being in the spotlight. ‘I wanted to get my schooling and my qualifications — it’s not something I thought much about. I like modelling but wouldn’t want to do it solely. I’d like to combine it with my nursing career and see what happens for me.
‘It’s crazy as I entered it on a whim — I never thought I could represent my country. Miss Universe is the only pageant I ever entered. I love the Rose of Tralee but I never thought about going for it. I never did modelling before and I’ve never had an agent. It’s all new to me.’
Grainne clearly has brains and dreams to burn so it begs the question, why would she choose to take part in what many consider an outdated misogynistic circus built on the objectification of women?
The idea of women competing against one another as they parade around the stage in skimpy bikinis and ball-gowns, to be judged not only by organisers but by millions around the world on their ‘beauty’, strikes many people as plain degrading.
It just doesn’t sit in a modern, equal and enlightened world, particularly in light of the #MeToo movement. In fact, it seems so archaic, and out of kilter with the zeitgeist, it’s amazing it hasn’t been axed.
Factor in the Donald Trump connection — the US president ran the pageant up until 2015 and during his reign, made it his business to meet all the women and tell them how
‘It was never degrading in any way’ ‘Many areas of women’s health are ignored’
A Donegal nurse with a passion for restoring women’s faith in the health system, Grainne Gallanagh is not your stereotypical Miss Universe contestant. But she insists the pageant’s ideals have changed...
beautiful they were — and one wonders how any woman could want to be associated with the Miss Universe ‘show’.
Of course, a pageant like Miss Universe was always going to struggle in a post-#MeToo world — and Miss Universe organisers knew it.
They spent a fortune rebranding this year’s pageant — the 67th competition with a record-breaking 94 women taking part — in a bid to make it more ‘relevant’.
But unlike the Miss America rounds, Miss Universe stopped short of ditching the controversial swimsuit contest. Still, all the men were axed from the judging panel, with a cohort of female ‘entrepreneurs’ and ‘industry experts’ called in to decide just who is the fairest of them all.
They asked supermodel Ashley Graham, who peddles a ‘body positive’ brand, to co-host the pageant to give it added credibility and also welcomed their first transgender entrant, Miss Spain Angela Ponce. But such sops don’t placate the haters. Grainne, for her part, welcomes all debate.
‘Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but for me it was never degrading in any way,’ she maintains. ‘For me, being in a bikini is not degrading.
‘It’s finding my confidence and embracing who I am and feeling empowered from that experience. Everyone I met was really passionate and intelligent and kind with the purpose of trying to build one another up rather than tear each other down.
‘Some of the girls had some hateful comments towards their body but they’re embracing who they are regardless of how they look. The judges were looking at more your interviewing and how you hold yourself than body size.’
But the fact remains that of all the women from 94 countries, Miss Universe judges invariably deemed women of a certain body size, figure and shape as ‘best’.
Is it mere coincidence there were no plus-sized models and only slim, athletic women made the catwalk for the Thailand finals?
‘We all looked very different and not everyone had the standard perfect body — we were all different,’ says Grainne.
‘I definitely don’t see myself as perfect and I see flaws in myself like everyone but this is about trying to embrace who you are. I focus on feeling empowered. I was shy in school and in secondary I opened up a bit more and became a bit more confident. You grow into yourself.’
Grainne can’t say enough good things about Brittany Mason, Miss Universe Ireland’s national director, who has spoken out about how beauty pageants saved her life and gave her confidence after a very difficult childhood.
‘When you feel confident you look confident,’ she says. ‘For me the whole point of Miss Universe is being confident and passionate, loving who you are — that makes you beautiful.
‘I loved that Irish girls like Roz Purcell and Cailín Áine Ní Toibín and in 2015 this amazing girl called Pia Wurtzback — who did a lot for HIV awareness — they used it to make very interesting careers. I always admired the women and saw the messages they were getting across.’
But Grainne agrees the competition needs to evolve.
‘Yes, there is room for plussized models and there has been in the past.
‘To be honest, yes, there could be more diversity in body shapes. We’re all different sizes in this world and there’s room for more diversity.’
‘This is about embracing who you are’