Miss Earth competition forgets the earth and focuses on the Missies!

With environmental issues becoming a more well known topic, organizations like Miss Earth promote themselves as taking a positive stance, however are beauty pageants really the answer.

Founder and organizer, Maria James, said Miss Earth is unlike other beauty pageants, as the candidates are well informed ladies from the age of 18 to 26 who have a strong passion for the environment.

“The girls undergo rigorous judging to ensure they will do a good job in representing Australia” Mrs. James said.

"They are beautiful girls trying to make a difference, and this is a great avenue to do so” she said.

Miss Earth has now been running for 5 years in Australia and Maria James only hopes it becomes bigger, better and more well known.

The funding for Miss Earth comes from Maria’s own pockets, so therefore the girls are required to find sponsors that may help them fly to Sydney for the final week, pay for their accommodation and food for the week.

This year there were 17 candidates from across Australia who attended the final week in Sydney.

Melissa Neigbour, was one of those candidates, who is a town planner but spends a lot her time dedicated to Project Survival Pacifica.

“The Miss Earth schedule required me to take a whole week out of my usual life which involves working as an environmental planner with Conics and working with the Project Survival Pacific team” she said.

“I was ready for a full week of press conferences, pageant training and environmental activities” she said.

“However, when the organiser introduced the judges and listed their credentials, it became apparent that none of the judges were involved in the environmental field nor did they have any experience in this area” she said.

“The schedule on the following day was booked in for tree-planting, however this activity was cancelled and instead the day was re-scheduled entirely for make up and hair for the preliminary judging that evening which was open to the public. This wasn’t what I had taken a whole week off work for!” she said.

Melissa was contemplating pulling out of the competition as she did not feel it was at all what it promoted to be.

When a stretched hummer arrived to take the contestants on a city tour, Melissa decided to pull out of the competition.

“At this point the legitimacy of Miss Earth as a pageant for earth-loving participants who will take action to protect the Earth from man-made pollution, really started to fade” she said.

Another candidate, Liana Gray from Alice Springs, runs and operates her own company called I Love Earth.com.

With a huge passion for helping the environment she thought Miss Earth would be a great way to raise awareness of environmental issues.

“It's important to be aware and think what kind of impact your action will have on the environment. Every action has a reaction, and the earth will respond to how we treat it” she said.

It is clear that even the organizers of such a big event Miss Earth Australia can forget this.

“The good news is that we all have choices, and you have a choice whether to ride in a hummer or not, you don't have to follow the others” she said.

Similarly though, Liana felt the competition was a huge let down.

“As a contestant of Miss Earth I felt we had achieved nothing in the way of raising awareness of environmental issues or to help the environment in a tangible way” she said

“I felt like the pageant was focused primarily on beauty and on creating a great ‘show’ for the Saturday night” she said.

The program to make us forget who we really are, what we are really part of and our purpose

There is no doubt that we have been programmed in a way that distracts us away from our purpose, as we work to serve the artificial world we live in.

Author and teacher, Allan Yarrington of Byron Bay NSW said people have been brainwashed by consumerism, TV, institutions and pharmaceutical companies, and this has created a very secular and detached society.

"We are like an ant colony that has been given a different program so that, instead of putting all our energy/power of creation into constructing our ant hill and feeding each other and our young, we forget to do our part in the plan (the dream) that ensures the safety and well being of our fellow ants and start to think only of our-selves” Mr Yarrington said.

“When all the ants’ think only of them-selves, the anthill does not get built, not everyone gets fed and the babies are left with no one to look after them” he said.

“The dream of the ant world falls into a state of chaos, collapses and finally fades away into oblivion” he said.

Although this is analogy, it seems to resemble what is happening around us.

Local artist and dancer, Bonny Jane, believes there has to be a shift in our consciousness, otherwise our world, and us, will deteriorate.

“The ancient Mayans prophesied the evolution of man, the growing developments in technology, the climate changes and the loss of human kinds sense of self” Miss Jane said.

“They also prophesied that there will be a huge shift in human consciousness, whereby some people will move forward, while other may not” she said.

“We can already see this happening in the world, with people waking up and questioning their governments, belief systems and themselves” she said.

With the average person changing careers at least fourteen times in their live, perhaps they are searching for a life with more depth and meaning.

A Time to EVOLVE

In this 21st century humankind has created copious amounts of new technology’s and material objects that ‘advance’ our society. However, there are more lifestyle illness and diseases ever before, more stress and more conflict.

To top it off, we are facing tremendous changes in our natural world, such as global warming, polluted waterways, rising sea levels and animal extinction. What have we done to ourselves and our planets? The increasing demand for consumption and consumerism has pushed our environment to the brink, and pushed humankind to the edge.

Basically as a society we are extracted natural resources from the environment to feed our desire for material products. In the past decade alone one third of the worlds natural resources has been consumed…gone… We are cutting, and mining and hawling and trashing the place so fast that we are undermining the planets very ability to live here. A staggering 80% of the world’s original forests are gone. In the Amazon alone we are losing 2000 trees a minute. So if you do the math’s you can work out how many trees has been cut down after reading this blog.


How is it that Australian aborigines lived in harmony with the environment for over 40 000 years, and yet, we have only been here for just over 200 years and we have already done so much damage to our environment, and our self’s. Our society today survives on constructs such as banks, courts, government, bills, statutes, money, insurance, machinery, engines, skyscrapers, concrete, steel, plastic, careers, titles, standings and much more. Human beings have become preoccupied with the material life, and in this process have lost their soul purpose. Unfortunately people have become consumed by expectations and belief systems that engross them, becoming unsatisfied and unfulfilled in their lives.

Perhaps, we need to take notes from the American Indians, Australian Aborigines, the Incas, and the Mayans, and start to live a more simply life in harmony with nature and one another.

Unfortunately this notion of living in harmony with the environment has been destroyed, and some suggest this is due to mass consumerism. More and more people are purchasing products that they believe will bring them happiness; however we consume far more than we need to survive.

Human life exists here because of animals, trees, air, water and land. Science, technology and Industrialization have destroyed all these things. It is quite obvious that human life is coming to a bleak end very soon, if we do not change the way we are currently living.

As you read and explore this blog, I ask you all to reflect. Give a thought to your spiritual and emotional connection to this land and the people that surround you.
We are all gifted people. Every single person that reads this has something to offer to the planet.

Welcome to Mind Body Spirit

This site, Mind Body Spirit, is committed to the creation of communities throughout the world of aware individuals. It aims to educating people on the eating healthy and evolving their spirit.

In order to create an environment of knowledge sharing and learning, there will be news articles, short features, information about events, facts and much more you can easily access.

This site will encourage you to grow your own food and support one another away from the endless rules and obligations we currently struggle under, in order to achieve lives full of peace, joy and abundance for all and take care of our earth so that it flourishes.