Miss Iceland drops mic after being told she's 'too fat' for beauty pageant
UPDATE: Oct. 26, 2016, 4:16 p.m. BST The pageant president says organisers told Miss Iceland to lose weight.
LONDON -- Miss Iceland has quit an international beauty pageant after being told by staff "to lose weight for the finals" and that she had "too much fat" on her.
Arna Ýr Jónsdóttir posted her handwritten "goodbye letter" on Instagram, explaining her reasons for dropping out of the Miss Grand International event in Las Vegas.
"I am a very strong woman, but sometimes my strength isn't enough," Jónsdóttir wrote.
"Your staff told me that I had to loose weight for the finals because I have too much fat on me and also to big shoulders [sic]. They told me to eat less and then you would like me more," Jónsdóttir wrote.
Miss Iceland also said the judges told her she was "too fat".
Jónsdóttir told Icelandic newspaper Iceland Monitor she was instructed to stop eating breakfast, to only eat salad for lunch and to drink water every evening until the finals.
"In my country my body shape is perfect. And that's what I'm gonna remember. No one will ever tell me anything else," Jónsdóttir wrote in her open letter.
"I truly hope that the organisation opens their eyes because the year is 2016 and if you are gonna hold an international pageant you have to be able to see the international beauty," Jónsdóttir continued. People have taken to social media to praise Miss Iceland for her decision to quit the pageant.
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The president of Miss Grand International Nawat Itsaragrisil has since admitted that staff told Miss Iceland that she needed to lose weight if she wanted to do well in the contest.
“She asked some questions and for suggestions from our staff which they’ve replied according to what they think, she may be a little bit fat and they recommended her, in good way, to try to lose some weight in order to improve her chance to win,” Itsaragrisil said.
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Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
