Harnaaz Sandhu cites Miss Universe 1997 Brook Lee’s iconic answer on weight gain to call out trolls
In the recent past, Miss Universe 2021 Harnaaz Sandhu has had to brave social media trolling owing to her weight gain. She even told People magazine recently that while she did not mind the weight, it was the online bullying that made her feel uncomfortable.
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“I was bullied for gaining weight. It was kind of uncomfortable and really surprising for me to see how people started having their opinions, which should not really matter. It’s not about how you look, it’s about who you are from inside and how you treat people and what you believe in,” she was quoted as telling the publication.
Earlier this year, she also told PTI that she is allergic to gluten. “I’m one of those individuals who was first bullied that ‘she’s too skinny’ and now they bully me saying ‘she’s fat’. Nobody knows about my celiac disease. That I can’t eat wheat flour and many other things,” she had said.
Now, she once again broached the subject of weight and self-love on social media. In a now-unavailable Instagram story shared earlier this week, the beauty pageant winner from Chandigarh cited an old video of Brook Antoinette Mahealani Lee — also known as Brook Lee — from her Miss USA 1997 competition, which she won and then went on to clinch the title of Miss Universe that year.
During the Miss USA competition, she was asked a question about weight gain, and her iconic answer that evening sealed her victory. The host had asked her, “[The reigning] Miss Universe has recently been the subject of a lot of press attention about her weight. If this happened to you, how would you handle it?”
To this, Lee replied, “I think I would take a good hard look at myself and I’d look from the inside out and I would know I was the same girl that was crowned that day and it really didn’t matter what I look like on the outside, because I won for what I was in here. So if I go up, I go down, I get taller, I get shorter, my nose gets bigger, smaller, I’m still who I was when that crown was on my head and I am a good representative no matter what.”
Harnaaz purportedly re-posted this video with the text, “Just a reminder!”
The 22-year-old has addressed the issue talking about the importance of body positivity and self-love at an event earlier this year, where she said, “We, at the Miss Universe platform, talk about women empowerment and womanhood, and body positivity. I know there are a lot of people who are trolling me, and that’s okay, because it is their mindset.”
She continued, “But, there are a lot of other individuals who are trolled every day irrespective of if they are Miss Universes or not. I am empowering them making them feel that if I feel gorgeous, [they] are beautiful, too. It is in our minds how we perceive beauty.”
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