PageantCast News Desk: Beauty, brains: Miss Asia USA aims to be role model | Style

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Beauty, brains: Miss Asia USA aims to be role model | Style | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Karen Warren Chronicle

Miss Asia USA Diane Yoo models a fuchsia Marchesa gown at her home in Katy. The pageant winner says she will use her reign to inspire young girls of Asian descent.

Diane Yoo knows the world isn’t kind to ditsy beauty queens.

Remember Miss South Carolina, who gave a bumbling answer about U.S. geography at the Miss Teen USA 2007 pageant? (If not, you can relive that moment on YouTube, where the video has received more than 30 million hits.)

Yoo, a 27-year-old Houston native who was recently crowned Miss Asia USA, hopes to change the stereotype that beauty and brains don’t go together.

“That’s one of the most common misconceptions,” says Yoo, who returned home recently for the Japan-America Society of Houston’s annual gala. “I’m passionate about fighting stereotypes. Beauty is not just skin deep, and I hope to prove that and let the world know that beauty comes in many shades.”

Wearing a fuchsia Marchesa gown and a sparkling crown at her parents’ home in Katy, Yoo said the title gives her the opportunity to educate more people about the pageant, which judges contestants on their cultural knowledge as well as their beauty, talent and intellect, she said.

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