US beauty queen sues after she loses crown ‘for failing to lose weight’

LONDON - A beauty queen in the US has decided to sue pageant organisers after she lost her crown for failing to lose weight.

Domonique Ramirez, 17, was not only told to “get off the tacos” by pageant officials, but was also accused of being late to events and poor behaviour, ultimately “tarnishing” the image of the role.

Ramirez, who won the Miss San Antonio competition in April last year, says she is 5ft8in and a size 2 weighing 129lbs.

Now she has obtained a temporary restraining order to stop organisers, Miss Bexar County Organization Inc, from promoting runner-up Ashley Dixon to the crown.

The lawsuit, posted online by KSAT 12, said since Caroline Flores took over as Executive Director in November, she was “unrelenting in her criticisms and attacks on Domonique”.

The suit claims breach of contract, alleging Ramirez was not provided with a chaperone and transport to events, although as a 16-year-old she had only just got her driver’s licence and didn’t know her way round San Antonio.

Flores complained of lateness and other charges, which made Ramirez “unfit for a Miss San Antonio”, but Ramirez claims she has shown up to every single event scheduled during her reign.

“I have been five or 10 minutes late to some, but only because I didn’t have a chaperone, which they did promise me,” the Daily Mail quoted her as telling the Express newspaper.

“They are bringing stuff up from the past, and making things up that are just not true,” she stated.

Pageant spokesman Linda Woods said that the pageant always gives winners an option to have a driver - and claimed Ramirez had insisted her mother would drive her everywhere instead.

She said Ramirez had been tardy to more than three events, and discounted her claim that she was only five or 10 minutes late, saying that at times she had been an hour and a half to two hours late, and once had not shown up at all.

She also said that when confronted about her tardiness, Ramirez was “not remorseful”.

Woods also said that Ramirez’s contract obliged her to “maintain” the weight and measurements she had when she first signed the contract, and insisted that her weight was “a moot point”.

“We support a healthy lifestyle,” she said, adding that beauty queens have to stay in shape and train for events “just like an athlete”.

“She just didn’t want to do that,” she stated.

The suit, filed with the help of the League of United Latin American Citizens, says it aims to show each allegation is “untrue, exaggerated, embellished and/or the fault of MBCO or Flores”. (ANI)