This year, the Philippines had one of the most tragic performances in the grand slam beauty pageants as our delegates to Miss Universe, Miss World, Miss International, Miss Tourism International and Miss Earth were not able to place even in the semi-finals. We only managed to salvage two special awards, both Miss Photogenic, courtesy of Anna Theresa Licaros in Miss Universe and Jeanne Harn in Miss Earth. The said awards were based from public voting. But despite a lackluster performance in 2007, the Philippines climbed one notch to no. 5 in the overall ranking of countries considered to be a powerhouse in major beauty pageants according to Globalbeauties.com. View the list of the Top 15 countries after the jump...

From the pageant website Globalbeauties.com, here is their methodology on how they come up with the rankings:

In September of 2003 Global Beauties launched the “Grand Slam” ranking, a system which makes possible to measure the performance of each participant country in the five most acclaimed beauty pageants in the world in the last 10 years: Miss World, Miss Universe, Miss International, Miss Earth, and now, Miss Tourism Queen International. For the Men’s Grand Slam Ranking the pageants to be considered are Mister World, Manhunt International and Mister International.

The following is an overview of the basis on which the ranking is calculated.

a) Condidered for the ranking are all countries which have participated in a ‘big 5’ women’s pageant or ‘bib 3’ men’s pageant, taking into account the results of such competitions over a time span of the last ten years.

b) Once a new pageant is held, results from exactly ten years ago are erased, and the new ones are added. (ex. All points earned by countries during the 1993 Miss Universe pageants were discarded immediately after results of Miss Universe 2003 were added to the ranking).

c) The ranking list is calculated on by a computer program which assigns a country points for its achievements in a major international contest, according to clearly defined criteria.

d) The factors taken into consideration are winning or placing among finalists and semi-finalists in a ‘big 4’. (special prizes such as Miss Photogenic, Cyber Press, Elegance, etc, are no longer computed).

e) Points are awarded as following: pageant’s winner (20 points), 2nd place (19 points), 3rd place (18 points); 4th place (17 points), 5th place (16 points), 6th place (15 points), 7th place (14 points), 8th place (13 points), 9th place (12 points), 10th place (11 points), 11th place (10 points), 12th place (9 points), 13th place (8 points), 14th place (7 points), 15th (6 points), 16th (5 points), 17th place (4 points), 18th place (3 points), 19th place (2 points), 20th place (1 point);

f) When exact results for all ranking positions are not made available, an average of those is calculated to determine points earned by such countries (ex- In Miss World 2002, where rankings from 6th to 10th and from 11th to 20th were not revealed, each of the semi-finalist countries in the top 20 earned 5,5 points (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10/10), while those who placed among the top 10 earned 13,0 points each (11+12+13+14+15/5).

g) A weight is given to each of the ‘big 5’ women’s pageant and ‘big 3’ men’s pageants before points are added to determine the Grand Slam Ranking. Based on tradition, years of existence, television telecast and audience, production quality, press interest and number of participant countries, it was agreed that Miss World results would be multiplied by 2.0, Miss Universe results would be multiplied by 2.0, Miss International results would be multiplied by 1.0, Miss Tourism Queen International would be multiplied by 1.0 and Miss Earth results would be multiplied by 1.0; Mister World results would be multiplied by 2.0, Manhunt International results would be multiplied by 1.5 and Mister International results would be multiplied by 1.0.

h) At the end of each year, three awards are given. The “Country of the Year Award” goes to the country with the best performance in that particular year alone. The “Grand Slam Award” goes to the country which has finished the year in the overall 1st place. The “Best Mover of the Year Award” will be given to the country which has made the most significant improvement in the ranking within the last 12 months.

Apparently, South Africa, which is last year’s no. 5, lost some points this year and dropped to no. 9 position. Luckily, Philippines took over South Africa’s 5th position even after what they call a “catastrophic performance” in 2007.