Alicia Machado

Yoseph Alicia Machado was born in Venezuela. It all started for her when on September 27, 1995 she was representing the state of Yaracuy in Venezuela winning the crown of Miss Venezuela.

Next year, in 1996, Alicia went to Las Vegas, Nevada USA to represent Venezuela in Miss Universe. Fot this contest Alicia prepared, and trained herself hard, up to 14 hours a day which included catwalking, picture posing, oratory, English, etc.

On May 17, 1996, all that training, and hard work, and of course her beauty was enough to take the crown home, she became the 1996 Miss Universe.

A few months after winning the tittle of Miss Universe, Alicia Machado started to gain weight, to which she atributed to the 'wisdom teeth' she had to take out and so made her look a little chubby. Nevertheless, she kept gaining weight until she reached about 12 kilos (about 20lbs) overweight. The organizers of Miss Universe though of taking the crown from here since she was representing the most beautiful, and perfect woman in the world, and so pverweight didn't make happy the board of directors.

I January 1997, Mr. Trump, the president of Miss Universe humiliated her making her workout in front of photographers. She argued about this but, at the end she had to do it because she was an 'employee of the Miss Universe Organization'

Alicia Machado has been the most publicized Miss Universe. It made so much news around the globe that in the 1997 Miss Universe one of the questions to the contestants was "Do you think if the elected Miss Universe gains weight, should she be disqualified as Miss Universe?" to which all answered "No" because whether she, Miss Universe, gains weight or not, she's still the same person.

When she returned the corwn to her succesor, she started working as an actress performing in telenovela "Samata" winning the Nidia Awards as best actress. She's worked on a number of telenovelas, and she's still as beautiful as she can be.