A DIFFERENT WORLD

In 1970 the Miss World pageant crowned its first black winner. But Grenadian beauty Jennifer Hosten’s achievement was overshadowed by a group of feminists who stormed the pageant. A new film revisits the watershed moment

- KATIE GLASS

FOR most winners of Miss World, the most memorable moment must surely be when the glittering crown is placed on their head. But what Jennifer Hosten, the Grenadian winner of the contest in 1970, recalls most vividly is arriving at the Royal Albert Hall in London to find it besieged by protesters waving signs reading: “Cattle market”, “You poor cows”, “Miss World, Man’s World”.

Miss World 1970 was the year beauty queens and feminists collided – a moment now reimagined in the film Misbehaviour, starring British actresses Gugu Mbatha-Raw, as Jennifer, and Keira Knightley, as the feminist activist Sally Alexander.

“Back then, Miss World was like the Oscars,” Jennifer tells me on the phone from Toronto, Canada, where she now lives. The pageant, a spectacle of sequins and swimsuits, was watched by millions around the world.

In 1951, Eric Morley started a beauty contest to promote dancehalls belonging to Britain’s Mecca Group. In time, the event morphed into Miss World. His widow, Julia Morley, says he saw the pageant as part of his country’s post-war recovery effort.

Eric advertised for “girls aged between 17 and 25, ideally 5ft 7in (1,7m), weighing eight or nine stone (50-57kg), waist 22-24 inches (56-61cm), no more no less, a lovely face, good teeth, plenty of hair and perfectly shaped legs from front and back – carefully checked for such defects as slightly knocked knees”. In that first year, the Swedish winner took home £1 000.