You're reading: Mrs. America pageant takes event to Crimea

While the civilized world is shunning Russian-annexed Crimea, organizers of the Mrs. America beauty pageant are so enraptured with the Kremlin’s land grab that they have decided to move the pageant there.

While choosing the Mrs. America 2014 on Aug. 29 in Tucson, Arizona, the organizers announced that the next year’s pageant will take place in “Sevastopol, Russia.” Sevastopol is Crimea’s biggest city. The pageant will take place jointly with the Mrs. Russia contest.

Such decision came as strikingly strange since it was taken amid extreme tension in the relationship of Russia and the western world.

Mrs. America, an annual beauty pageant meant for young married women, was first organized in 1977. It should not be confused with the much more famous Miss America pageant. However, the Crimea announcement will surely drive some new attention to the contest.

“If you missed it here it is… Mrs. America goes to Russia. The Crowning of Mrs. America and Mrs. Russia in Sevastopol, Russia!” says the recent post on the official Facebook page of the pageant.

The announcement caused shock. While the U.S. government and the international community has not recognized the annexation of the Crimea, the pageant organizers made their message clear.

The official website of the pageant says that “Mrs. America-Russia” pageant will be held in Sevastopol in September of 2015.

Organizer of the Mrs. Russia pageant, Aleksey Kuznetsov, and Mrs. World 2006 winner from Russia, Sofya Skya, came to the stage of the Mrs. America 2014 on Aug. 29 to announce the joint project for next year.

The comments under the Facebook post say it all.

“I wonder for how many rubles did the Mrs. America organizers sell their souls for. I’m sure this pageant will be great propaganda material for the state media while Russia continues with its ethnic and cultural cleansing of the peninsula. You people are disgusting,” Serhiy Vernei, living in Indiana, comments.

Some commenters ironically suggest Mrs. America should organize the contest in Iraq or North Korea as the next step.

“You must be kidding me. Sevastopol is Ukraine. Americans are notoriously bad in geography,” concludes Jacques de Gaulle from Palo Alto, California.

Kyiv Post staff writer Bozhena Sheremeta can be reached at [email protected].