IF there is one thing that can trigger Filipinos, it would be beauty pageants. And if online voting is the only basis for judging the winner, our country will be undefeated. In the latest edition of the Miss Universe Pageant held in El Salvador, our contestant Michelle Dee may have failed to land in the top 5, more so the crown. But her performance has electrified many Filipinos to the point that as a postscript to the contest, she won the online voting on the Best National Costume for wearing what many earlier criticized as a confused and confusing outfit.

Before the announcement of the final winner, many netizens criticized her so-called national costume for being an inauthentic representation of the country. It was indeed problematic to use an airplane to represent a country whose Air Force is not a force to reckon with and whose air industry is struggling to get over both financial difficulties and operational delays. The color of her airplane was not even representative of either Philippine Airlines or Cebu Pacific. It would have been outlandish to claim at the time that her costume was the best conceived from among the candidates in the pageant.

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