Miss Universe entrant a mother
A former Dunedin resident and budding beauty pageant contestant will be competing for the elusive top spot in the Miss Universe New Zealand pageant five months after giving birth.
Next week, Dr Deborah Lambie will take to the Miss Universe New Zealand stage in the hopes of representing New Zealand at the worldwide pageant in Thailand this November.
If she takes the top spot on Tuesday, she will be the first mother to represent their country at the competition.
While Dr Lambie said she was excited, she also had a healthy mix of nerves.
"I'm just really focusing on trying to enjoy it, and not worrying about the outcome ... just being able to be a finalist at this stage in my life is amazing."
Her son, Theodore "Teddy" Cameron-Lambie, was born on January 4, 2025.
Becoming a mother was "so rewarding and amazing," but it was good for her to do something she loved to do, she said.
Dr Lambie will be back competing in Miss Universe New Zealand five months postpartum.
"I had thought that this chapter of my life was closed, and so to have the opportunity to open it back up is really, really nice.
"We've never ever sent a mum to Miss Universe."
Initially, she was worried whether she would be confident enough, or had recovered enough to cross the stage so shortly after giving birth, she said.
"I was super lucky that I wasn't sick during my pregnancy, so I was able to just keep going with my normal exercise like walking, yoga and pilates.
"I've been super fortunate during my pregnancy, which has meant I've been able to recover well — I'm so grateful for that because that's not the same for everyone."
The pageant's preliminaries will be held on Sunday, and the Miss Universe Grand Finale would take place on Tuesday at the SkyCity Theatre, Auckland.
When she was a medical student studying at the University of Otago, Dr Lambie found herself representing New Zealand at the 2015 Miss World competition in China.
Back then, there were rules around eligible ages, whether people could be married or have children and the type of people who could enter, Dr Lambie said.
"They have really taken a step forward in the right direction in my mind, and it's basically got rid of all of those rules.
"I think it is a great step in the right direction of embracing a broader definition of beauty."
She is now living in Auckland, but visits family in Dunedin regularly.
laine.priestley@odt.co.nz
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NZ Herald
7 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Toi Tū Toi Ora reframed: Doco reveals Auckland Art Gallery politics of landmark Māori exhibition
The artists are all here tonight. The always-too-small foyer of SkyCity Theatre is bursting with a sold-out crowd for the premiere of Toi Tū: Visual Sovereignty, Chelsea Winstanley's documentary about what happened five years ago and a kilometre away at Auckland City Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. There had been a crowd back in 2020, too, with many of the same people in it, for the opening of Toi Tū Toi Ora, which was not only the largest show in the gallery's history, but also the largest exhibition of contemporary Māori art there had ever been. Yet, amid the celebration, there was a whisper that something had gone wrong, that even as Toi Tū opened its doors, its curator, Nigel Borell, had resigned. A cover story in the NZ Herald's Canvas magazine a few weeks later finally told the public what the artists knew – that Borell and the gallery's director, Kirsten Lacy, had fallen out over what he described as 'different ways of viewing aspirations for Māori'. 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There are murmurs and an audible gasp when Lacy, an Australian appointed to run the gallery in 2019, just as Borell's five-year dream for the exhibition was becoming a reality, is shown announcing her intention to go off on her own to conduct 'informal meet and greets' with iwi about how they would like to engage with the exhibition – effectively over the heads of Borell and Haerewa. Borell, sitting at home on Zoom, simply gets up and leaves the frame, to laughter from the audience. 'She's got to go with someone,' says painter and Haerewa's chair and founding member Elizabeth Ellis at a follow-up hui without Lacy. 'She's going to be discussing Māori stuff. We can't send her off, this young Australian woman, to carry our message.' Ellis and five other Haerewa members would eventually follow Borell in resigning. The film turns on an understanding of mana – translated on screen as 'authority to lead' – that will be familiar to many New Zealanders, but was not evident to Lacy. The gallery director arrived with an admirable record of working with indigenous artists in Australia but, it seems, an incomplete sense of the moment she was entering here. 'You have a moment to make some change,' says Borell at one point in the film. 'And if you don't use it in that way, then you're just taking up space.' Winstanley has gone out of her way not to be inflammatory, to the extent that some viewers could even wonder what all the fuss was about. She's after a teachable moment rather than a pile-on. Former Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki director Kirsten Lacy. Photo / Auckland City Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki 'I don't think she's a villain,' Winstanley says of Lacy the following morning. 'I think she is someone who … She's not Māori, she doesn't have the experience of having lived in this country, she doesn't understand or know that, and I think that's what comes across. And there's an opportunity, I think, for people in these positions. You can do what the beautiful Dr Maya Angelou says: 'Do the best you can until you know better – and when you know better, do better.'' Winstanley's original, more celebratory film survives through the twists of the story. We're taken straight from a troubled Zoom meeting to Reuben Paterson working out the lighting for Guide Kaiārahi, the crystalline waka taua that was Toi Tū Toi Ora's most prominent commissioned work, by virtue of its position at the gallery entrance. As commissions from Shane Cotton and Mataaho Collective take shape, we get a glimpse of the artists as purposeful engineers. The film, also commissioned by the gallery, provides an enriching context for the exhibition that will make viewers wish for a chance to see the art again with it all in mind. Indeed, that was the role it would have played had the exhibition toured as planned. Those plans were let go after Borell's departure – but the artists travelled even if the show did not. Eight New Zealand artists were invited to present at the Venice Biennale last year; all were Māori and all had been part of Toi Tū Toi Ora. An investment from the barrister Kahungunu Barron-Afeaki allowed Winstanley to fly there to capture the event, where Mataaho Collective claimed the Biennale's Golden Lion prize. Mataaho Collective won the Golden Lion award at the 60th Venice Biennale for their installation Takapau. Photo / Creative NZ Although Toi Tū Toi Ora had made its case by breaking gallery attendance records – at least since the return of the landmark Te Māori exhibition from New York in 1987, to which it is consciously connected in the film – following the story to Venice meant, says Winstanley, that 'we were able to truly celebrate what having that kind of sovereignty meant and that's what I'd envisioned in the beginning. 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NZ Herald
20 hours ago
- NZ Herald
On The Up: Gisborne student duo's song wins Sister Cities international award
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Otago Daily Times
3 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Ball on so children can have a ball
Bulletproof Convertible band members (from left) Paul Southworth, Silas Waring and Alex Ramsay will provide the music for the Dead Rockers Ball at Waitati Hall on Saturday. Photo: Gregor Richardson For more than a decade, the last thing Blueskin Bay children have been having in the playground next to the Waitati library is a ball. Waitati resident Mandy Mayhem said when the library was extended 12 years ago, all the playground equipment was removed, and all that remained in the area were a couple of trees and some berry bushes, making it a very unexciting place to play. "There's no playground — nothing for the children. "It's just crying out for some toddler play equipment." No money was budgeted to replace the playground equipment, so parents in the area are holding a fundraising event on Saturday at 7.30pm — the Waitati Dead Rockers Ball. She said the area had recently undergone maintenance work, including an expanded area with retaining wall and a new fence. So it was now a blank canvas for a few fun and accessible pieces of play equipment. "There will be some ideas and designs for local parents to be inspired by, and they can indicate what they would like to see there. "In the meantime, we are getting started on the fundraising while a community vision for the space is created." She said the Dead Rockers Ball would include prizes for the best-dressed dancer, raffles, plants and hampers to win, as well as a mystery bottle auction. Dunedin-based three-piece swamp rock band Bulletproof Convertible would provide '50s-influenced and "danceable as hell" music for the ball.
