Quito decides to end city beauty pageant

Beauty pageants in Ecuador may soon go the way of the horse and buggy and bib and tucker.

Daniela Almeida, the reigning Queen of Quito may be the last.

Calling pageants “archaic and discriminatory,” the chairwoman of the board that has traditionally staged the Queen of Quito contest, announced Tuesday that there would be no beauty pageant in 2019. Liliana Yunda, sister of Quito Mayor Jorge Yunda, made the announcement on the radio program “Pulso Informativo.”

“It is time we put an end to this spectacle,” she said. “The election of a queen has lost its validity in modern society as we recognize the fact that a woman cannot be judged based on her hair color and body measurements.” She added that the money spent on the pageant can be put to better use.

Following Yunda’s comments, the Quito municipal press office confirmed the decision to end support for the pageant. “These events are anachronistic and not based on merit,” a press statement read. “Europe ended the staging of beauty pageants decades ago and they have been abandoned more recently in the U.S. and Canada. We expect pageants will cease altogether in Ecuador within a decade.”