Difficult time for beach girls

Press, 24 February 1978, Page 7

Difficult time for beach girls

By

A. K. Grant

South Pacific’s SixThirty Special, “Miss New Zealand Beach Girl,” was a fairly dire sort of event. The girls were for the most part gauche, appallingly hairdressed and clumpinly shod. Let me say at once, before the Feminist Mounted Cavalry rides to the charge, sharpening its lances, or grievances, or whatever it is that it sharpens, that I entirely

agree that beauty contests are degrading to women. This is particularly the case when beauty is claimed for a collection of women who are in fact fairly plain. Forunately the girl who won the contest had both looks and personality, but she was pretty much on

her own, and Robin Stewart’s repeated desperate assertions that the judges were having a difficult

time must be taken to mean that they were having a difficult time not bursting into tears, or laughter, or both. Presumably Robin Stewart, host of “Opportunity Knocks,” was put in

charge of this show because it was a sort of “Opportunity Knockers.” He did his best, but so did Charles I, another Stuart, and look what happened to him. Like Charles I, Robin Stewart lost his head, although unlike Charles I he did so on more than one occasion. Perhaps the worst occasion was when, having announced the winner, Stewart and Chic Littlewood completely masked her from view. Chic Littlewood is bad enough at any time, but he is at his least entertaining when standing in front of a pretty girl. However, he at least had the grace to realise that the guest of

honour was missing. Stewart gave no impression of realising that anything was happening other than that he himself was on camera. A singer called, I think, Ski, gave a brief lift to proceedings, and Murray Chenery cheneried away in his usual manner. There was also poignance to be derived from the girls’ aspirations. One had always wanted to be an air hostess but became a nurse instead, one had always been interested in owning a boutique in which she would supply clothes to the normal girl (as opposed, I presume, to the deviant girl), another’s first words to Prince Charles would be to congratulate him on being an uncle. It was all really rather sad, as must be any occasion on which a lot of perfectly nice, ordinary girls are deluded into pretending to be raving beauties.