From body-shamed, to Miss Universe Australia

A national finalist for Miss Universe Australia is making waves with her radical approach to body positivity, and it’s a dark past experience which compels her to shed light on the issue.

Diana Hills is a national finalist for the Miss Universe pageant, and a candidate for the coveted Miss Universe Australia.

The journalism student hails from Sydney’s Central Coast, and though she always dreamed of taking Australia to the world stage, in recent years it became a burning passion for one reason.

In 2017 Diana won the Miss Tourism Australia crown, but it wasn’t her Q&A or quirky personality that had people talking.

It was her petite frame, and people weren’t talking they were shouting.

An online article from the Daily Telegraph sparked the social media furore after it posed the question, ‘Why do Miss Tourism NSW girls look so alike?’alongside an image of Diana in a red bikini.

People didn’t hold back with their opinions on the then 19-year-olds physique.

“People were saying things like, ‘If that was my daughter I’d be concerned,’, ‘She looks like she’s on her death bed.’,” Diana recalled.

“One person called me emaciated. It was really surprising,” she admitted.

She says that while the comments took their toll, particularly on family members who wanted to step in and defend her, she stood her own ground.

“I’ve always been thin, my mums thin, it’s just my genetics. But I’ve always known I’m healthy,” she said, adding that many of the comments came for a surprising source.

“It was older people who were acting like they were concerned for me, when really they were just being nasty,” she said.

“The article was supposed to be about an event, and I remember thinking, ‘why are we talking about my body?’,”

Since the incident, Diana has been determined, not only to prove them wrong but to dismantle a toxic culture of cyber-bullying and body-shaming.

“To be honest it just fuels the fire in a good way,” she says of the 2017 incident.

“It’s motivated me.”

Now she’s turned that experience into a passion project, as part of the Miss Universe competition she is championing self-love and mental health awareness.

“One of my main goals is to be an advocate for positive body image and (for) young women empowering each other,” she says.

She says the beauty pageant, which has been running since 1952 and has copped it’s fair share of criticism, gives her an international platform that she hopes to use to inspire people to embrace their bodies.

For Diana the bottom line is allowing women to embrace their bodies in all their forms.

“People really need to consider that absolutely every body is different,” she said, mentioning that while. “It’s not going to work the same for you that it works for me.”

Former Miss Australia’s include Jennifer Hawkins and Rachel Finch, and it’s not the first time a pageant hopeful has felt the sharp sting of body shaming.

A former Miss Universe recently revealed she was fat-shamed for gaining just 1 kilo after winning the competition.

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