I was flabbergasted by Kristina Chetcuti’s article ‘Our beauty contests are stuck in the 1950s’ (The Sunday Times, July 24).

The fact that she built a whole article on a single sentence taken from a two-hour TV show indicates how short her attention span is.

Ms Chetcuti tells us she’s not a child, whose lack of attention would be justified, but actually a mother.

Ms Chetcuti wrote: “Now, the talk was not about world peace and cuddly kittens – that would have been predictable and bearable.”

For someone to still believe that the role of the modern woman is to look after “cuddly kittens” and just speak about love and her role in theories is not only unbearable but surely insulting for all those women who came forward to uphold women’s rights and all those who have given women better status than that of a minority group.

The questions asked during the Miss World Malta contest (and not Miss Malta, which is a different contest) had to show the girls’ acumen, smartness and speaking ability to highlight the participants’ personality.

Asking a participant “what role does a woman have in society” is in fact a thought out of one’s subconscious that a woman has a vital role. Then it’s up to the participant to explain and elaborate on the matter in order to be judged on her reply.

For some reason, Ms Chetcuti also found it difficult to understand another question: “Fashion is surely something you follow, what else makes you interesting?”

It is logical to presume that a girl who participates in a beauty contest is keen on fashion and beauty – at least we hope so if she wishes to build a career in this field. I am curious to know what else she is interested in. But for Ms Chetcuti this question was sexist.

Such thinking is in line with the decades-old stereotyping of models and aspiring models.

For some reason, Ms Chetcuti shows that the situation might have changed and been inherited by a few beauty contest viewers... which is a pity.

She also felt she had to give medical advice to the presenter, Charles Saliba, when she suggested he should wear “reading specs”.

What I might suggest is a ‘question interpreter’ with the host for people like Ms Chetcuti to avoid conspiracy theories and old-fashioned stereotypes.

We all hope that while our young women enter beauty competitions for which they prepare hard to do their utmost to celebrate femininity and the achievements of the modern woman, other women will not undermine such achievements through their ways of thinking which are stuck in the past.

Moving forward isn’t just about the right to vote and the freedom of the press but also the right to think... hopefully the right way!