Inside Paraguay’s Plus Sized Beauty Pageant

Since 2012, Paraguay’s Ms. Gordita beauty pageant has been giving plus-sized women a chance to compete in the kind of event that’s long excluded them. The organizers, the participants, and the judges are on a mission to show that beauty is about more than just a dress size—a particularly important point in Paraguay, where roughly one in two people are considered overweight. VICE Mexico went to check out the latest pageant and talked to a handful of contestants to hear about why the event is important to the country, and how it's helped with their own self-esteem.