Miss England told to fatten up
Sara Hall

NEW YORK—A British beauty queen says she was told to pack on pounds for the upcoming Miss World competition — an unexpected request, considering she’s not rail-thin. “I was a little bit shocked,” Miss England Georgia Horsley said Friday in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show.
“I don’t think I’m too thin. I’m happy with the way I am,” said the 20-year-old, who is a size 4. She added: “I probably would have been more hurt if they told me to lose weight, I think.” Horsley said pageant organizers want “their girls to be more voluptuous and womanly and curvy, you know, rather than the stick-thin, size-0 models that you see around.”
“I’ve just got quite more of an athletic, boyish-type figure rather than the hourglass figure that some women have,” said the 5-foot-8 Horsley. “And they’re just seeing if, you know, I could maybe put a bit of weight on and it might give me those curves.” The Miss World press office didn’t immediately respond Friday to an e-mail from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Horsley has little more than a month to gain weight: the Miss World pageant will be held in China on Dec. 1.
“They’ve not given me a total (weight) to get to,” she said. “But I’m going to eat, you know, healthy fats such as nuts and avocado, oily fish, things like that.” Horsley said the request was no big deal, comparing it to being asked to get a tan or let her hair grow. “I don’t think this is a major, major thing, you know,” she said. “They just want me to put on a few pounds.”
Sure, but what if she gains weight in all the wrong places? “I’m trying to work out at the same time,” she said. “It’ll hopefully maybe level things out a bit. But, I mean, if I do start putting weight on, say, my stomach or somewhere on my thighs where I don’t really want to put it on ... I’ll obviously scrap the idea and I’ll just accept the fact that I’m a naturally athletic build and can’t do the curves”.