by Thomas Stephens, swissinfo.ch

Until recently, beauty contests – largely derided as out-dated sexism in the rest of Europe – have been big business in Switzerland. Now, however, the winds of change are blowing away the clouds of hairspray.

Ever since Switzerland’s Stefanie Job won the inaugural Miss Europe in 1928, slim young Swiss girls have strutted around stages in swimming costumes being graded, usually by older men.

But whereas public disapproval drove such shows from television screens elsewhere in Europe decades ago – the BBC announced in 1984 that it would “stop televising beauty pageants because they are anachronistic and almost offensive” – Miss Switzerland was treated as media royalty until last September, when Swiss public television pulled the plug after steadily falling audience figures (see box).

Switzerland, however, can never claim to have been at the vanguard of sexual equality, having only given women the vote in 1971 (1991 in one canton, and that was only because the federal government put its foot down).

read more here:
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/Sashes_to_sashes:_the_death_of_Miss_Switzerland.html?cid=32610984