Some of you may think that the photo above is from Maxim, or Entertainment tonight or some other slick and glossy glamour circus. You'd be wrong. It's actually a screen capture of the television broadcast of the 2000 Miss World Contest held this past November 30th taken from the website Simply Gorgeous.

If you're like me you've all but given up on so-called 'beauty' contests like Miss World, Miss Universe, Miss America, and Miss USA. I'm tired of watching a 2 1/2 hour marathon waiting to see something beautiful, but getting nothing but Barbara Walters wanna be's, in their short, over-coiffed, anchorwomen hair, and in their bathing suits - yikes!

Apparently real female beauty is making a come back in the beauty contest scene, at least judging from the coverage of the Miss World pageant available at Simply Gorgeous. I'm sorry I missed it, yet as far as I know this website is the only place to find any real after-the-fact coverage of the show. I guess everyone else was asleep. Beauty contests have been a real bore lately. Hopefully, though, talent like we see in the Miss World competition has come back to stay.

Who knows? Maybe one day we'll even read about it in Maxim.

To see the coverage at Simply Gorgeous click here.