There she is, America’s Perfect Teen — from Britain?
22nd September 2010
At first blush, it’s a familiar story: A small-town girl beats the odds to win fame and fortune at a beauty pageant. But the twist is that the small town of Anysha Panesar, newly crowned America’s Perfect Teen, is not in America at all — and that has some folks up in arms.
Anysha, 16, hails from Llangan, Wales — some 3,500 miles from U.S. shores. While on a family vacation in Kissimmee, Fla., last month, she entered the America’s Perfect Teen pageant on a whim. But lo and behold, when the winner was announced, she was the last young woman standing among 30 contestants.
Had she been Mexican — or Somalian — nobody would have dared say anything.
The pageant’s sponsors also had a few choice words for its founder, Michael Galanes, who steadfastly maintains the right girl won America’s Perfect Teen — even if she doesn’t happen to be American. “There really is no reason for any sort of uproar,” Galanes told NBC’s Michelle Kosinski. “You know how you say, that girl had ‘it’? Well, she truly did.”
We’ve always said that being an American is an attitude, not an ethnicity. This just proves it.
Anysha said she’s going to put her scholarship money to good use; after completing high school in Wales, she plans to relocate to the U.S. to study broadcasting. In fact, she is already in talks to launch her own reality TV show about her year as America’s Perfect Teen’s reigning queen.
There are many people in this world who are Americans at heart; they just haven’t gotten here yet. She’s obviously one of them.
September 22nd, 2010 at 11:32
I’m totally in favor of a ‘hot women’ exemption to the immigration laws.