GREECE: The Climax of Sin

A woman shall be good for everything in the home, but abroad good for nothing.

—Euripides

Greeks, mythological, ancient and modern, have long been the arbiters of womanly beauty, but their local queens have an uncertain record. Venus won the golden apple from Paris the shepherd, but helped him provoke the Trojan War; Callisto won the glances of Juno’s husband, and was promptly turned into a bear; Aliki Diplarakou, Miss Greece of 1929, dressed up in men’s clothes and smuggled herself into the monks’ sanctuary on Mount Athos that had stood, inviolate, since the Byzantine Empire. The following year the contests were discontinued, and in 1936 Strongman Metaxas decreed that no woman should go abroad with a hemline more than twelve inches from the ground.

Last year with Metaxas dead and gone, the big Athens newspaper Ethnos ran a “Miss Greece of 1952” competition, and their winner placed third in the Miss Universe contest in Long Beach, Calif. After that, shrewd promoters with an eye for a fast drachma started beauty contests all over the place. In Athens alone, there were more than 30 such contests. All this was heady stuff for a country where only last year women got the vote.

“Another Hollywood.” It was too much for 1,500 devout Greeks who call themselves Followers of St. John the Baptist and St. Athanasius. Cried their leader, Father Augustinios Kantiniotis: “Public scandals are being prepared . . . exhibitions of naked bodies . . . Paul the Apostle wrote that Christian women should ‘adorn themselves in modest apparel,’ but the organizers of these orgies say, ‘Don’t listen to Paul . . . undress yourselves . . . and become known as Miss Universe!’ Greeks, war veterans, mothers and fathers, shout, ‘Down with these orgies!’ . . . and, with the help of Jesus Christ, we will prevent Greece from being turned into another Hollywood.” The Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church approved the stand of the Followers, and asked the government to ban all beauty contests as “the climax of sin.”

The government was not willing to offend either womankind or Ethnos, one of its biggest supporters, so the Miss Greece finals went on last week as scheduled. Shiny lines of Buicks and Cadillacs brought 700 VIPs (including ex-Premiers Sophocles Venizelos, Constantine Tsaldaris and a dozen Cabinet or ex-Cabinet ministers) to the swank, open-air Argentina Club, by the waterfront at Phaleron Bay. Admission charge: $9 a head (drinks extra). Eleven finalists paraded, first in bathing suits, then in evening gowns. Outside the club, 200 policemen waited in their squad cars for something more exciting to happen. It soon did.

“Body Worship.” Six cassocked priests, accompanied by 200 of their supporters, turned up at the gate, carrying picket signs that read, “Stop this body-worship.” Then another group ran a fishing boat close inshore, a few hundred feet from the Argentina, and tried to storm the beachhead from behind. This disturbance distressed Athens Police Chief Nicholas Tsaousis, who was inside the nightclub, in white jacket, strictly in line of duty. “Pick a few of them up,” he commanded.

So the police hustled 52 of the pickets, including the priests, to the nearest precinct. While the contest judges slowly settled on their choice, the cops made a lengthy check on the pickets to determine whether their identity cards were in order. It took them until 5 a.m., when by happy coincidence, the Argentina had just locked up tight, to decide that everybody’s cards were in order. With a sigh of relief, the cops sent the priests and their followers home, secure in the knowledge that their country had a new Miss Greece: 19-year-old Fedora Xyrou (34½-25-37½).

This week, with eight other beauty queens, Fedora arrived in Manhattan en route to the Miss Universe contest in California. “I want to stay and get a job in America—no, no, not go back,” said she.