On November 9, a new Miss Universe was crowned, and her name is Gabriela Isler. Gabriela Isler, who's a native of Venezuela, is no doubt a beautiful and intelligent woman, so she greatly deserves the crown. What's more interesting is that Isler is the seventh contestant from a South American country to take home the crown.
Interestingly enough, the winner's full name is not Gabriela Isler, it's actually Maria Gabriela de Jesus Isler Morales. That is a whole mouthful, which could be the likely reason why she shortened her name for the competition. If she didn't, the judges and announcers would have had a difficult time attempting to pronounce her name.
During the competition, Isler managed to best 86 other contestants for the diamond crown. The victory allowed her to unseat last year's winner, Olivia Culpo, an American-born 25-year-old, who is a TV host on Venezuela's Venevision.
"I have a lot of emotions. I can't describe all the things that I feel at this moment because I'm shaking," she said in an interview.
During the interview process of the competition, Isler had the following to say after Steven Tyler asked her about her biggest fear.
"I believe we should overcome all of our fears and this in turn would make us much stronger, and [thus] we can become stronger persons," she said. "As soon as we overcome our fears and we are sure of ourselves, then we can face any challenge."
First runner-up went to Miss Spain, Patricia Yurena Rodriguez, while Miss Ecuador, Constanza Baez, took second runner-up position. Fourth place went to Miss Philippines, Ariella Arida. She also sent her support via Instagram to the folks who are stuck in the midst of the deadly typhoon.
All women competed in swim wear and gowns for the title of Miss Universe at the final show in Moscow.
Russia was a peculiar choice for the Miss Universe pageant since several employees are gay and Russia is a country with strict ant-gay laws. However, Donald Trump, a co-owner of the organization, made the following statement.
"We have a lot of gay people who work at the Miss Universe pageant, and we said, 'What do you think?' And they said, 'We want to go, we want to show our stuff,'" he told NBC News on Saturday.
