Mr Gay Iceland competes in the most publicised international gay contest in the world
A group of handsome young men gather in the historic city of Rome this week, in the hopes of winning the title of Mr Gay World, an annual beauty pageant for gay rights. The winner of the competition gets to travel all over the world as a global representative for the international gay community. Our very own Iceland has a hopeful delegate in this year’s running, the super charismatic Mr Troy Michael.
“I love the gay scene in Iceland. It’s just so great and almost the whole country was at Gay Pride and everything. It’s so awesome,” says Troy. With Iceland’s gay-friendly laws and LGBTI culture, Gay Pride and pink tourism, we’d expect to do well in such a competition. However, Iceland has never even been in the top 10 for this competition before. “We’re planning to get into the top 10 for the first time,” says Troy confidently. “My national costume and swimwear are very controversial. My national costume is a volcano. There’s a pin that I’m going to pull out and it’s going to start smoking as I walk on stage. I’m not going to give away my swimwear now but it is very controversial. It’s going to be crazy and it’s going to be very, very shocking to see what I do.”
Troy’s goal is to work with political leaders and organisations all over the world in order to educate people about gay rights and also to reach out to the international LGBTI community. His greatest concern is dealing with problems such as depression and suicide plaguing the gay community, especially in countries where gay rights are not existent or limited. “Just be yourself. It’s going to be okay and there will be people to help you,” Troy tells the gay community. “That´s really what the competition is about,” he states. “It’s difficult being gay, especially in a place where it’s not accepted or illegal and we want people to know that there are people like them around and who are there to help and support them. I don’t have an exact answer to how we’re going to go about doing that now but that’s what we should all be working on together.”
The competition consists of a communication challenge, a photo shoot, a written test, a sport, a congeniality and art challenge. There is also a weird voting challenge where you can vote for your favourite delegate on the website every 24 hours, putting countries with a small population at a severe disadvantage. However, if every person in a sparsely populated country would just throw in a vote, I’m sure this population based popularity contest wouldn’t be that much of a problem right?
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Vote for Mr Gay Iceland here.
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