NEW YORK — Editors at People magazine announced on Wednesday they had finished scouring the planet in search of this year’s “World’s Most Beautiful Woman,” and that U.S. actress Sandra Bullock has been selected as the winner of the title.
“Ms. Bullock possesses the perfect blend of beauty, grace, intelligence, kindness, wit, humor, talent and natural flowery body oder,” said editor-in-chief Wes Kegels. “I would love to touch her hair.”
“More important, however, is that she’s a Hollywood A-lister, has a slim figure, and she’s been embroiled in no major scandals,” Kegels added. “Also, she’s a mother, which is truly rare and heroic.”
Settling on the 50-year-old star of such blockbusters as “Speed” and “Gravity” was not easy, editors say, considering just how many women there are in the world.
“We dispatched teams to all corners of the globe, from Los Angeles to Timbuktu, to photograph and chat with every single woman,” said editorial assistant Naomi Mathewson, who joined the search in April of last year when she travelled by canoe to a remote village in Kenya. “Three-and-a-half billion is a huge number of interviews to conduct, but with God as my witness, we did it.”
The celebratory tone doesn’t come without some sadness, however, as the staff mourns the loss of a dozen employees who didn’t make it back alive to the magazine’s New York headquarters.
“We lost three interns alone in Afghanistan, and two are believed to be imprisoned and set to be executed in North Korea,” Mathewson added. “May they forever be remembered as martyrs.”
This is the 15th time in the award’s 26-year history that an American actress has been chosen, leading some people to question why women outside of the U.S. entertainment industry are so ugly.