Padukone, 23, has risen to stardom quickly in the past two years, which is especially unlikely, since her family is not connected to the film industry and she's not from Mumbai, according to CNN. Her father is a professional badminton player and, as a teenager she planned to follow in his footsteps and travelled the country competing in badminton tournaments. But at 16, she decided she wanted to model and began appearing in commercials and music videos.

Padukone got her break with director Farah Khan spotted her in a music video and cast her in the 2007 film Om Shanti Om opposite prominent Bollywood star Shahrukah Khan. In addition to becoming a hit in India, the film earned $45 million worldwide and became the second highest-grossing Hindi film of all-time. Padukone says:

"Things for me changed quite overnight, actually. I remember a couple of months before the film release, not too many people knew me. In November 2007 when my film released and immediately after that I had to travel to New York, to Dubai and to London, and suddenly everyone on the streets started recognizing me, especially the Indians. That's when I realized that things have changed."

Though Bollywood-style dancing has been a part of many Indian beauty pageant contestants' routines since more Indian women began winning pageants in the 1990s, the success of Indian films abroad has inspired contestants to become far more serious about their dancing, Reuters reports. In the video below, this year's Indian Miss World contestants train with leading Bollywood choreographer Shiamak Davar in the hope that the recent popularity of Bollywood films (and Slumdog Millionaire) will make them stand out in front of an international audience.

The New Face Of Bollywood [CNN]
Miss India Steps Up With Bollywood [Reuters]

The artist Andrew Logan created the first Alternative Miss World pageant in London in 1972, at the height of the original's smiling, bikini'd popularity. To Logan, the event was a celebration of the burgeoning gay and artistic counterculture; homosexuality and cross-dressing had only been made legal seven years previously. Writes Michele Hanson, a be-mopped and wedding-gowned contestant in that first pageant,

The official Miss World may, over the years, have had strict rules about age, gender, shape, size, outfit and behaviour - unmarried mothers, drinkers and former nude models tend not to have been wanted. Logan's Alternative has no such restrictions. Gay men have been contestants, and so have straight men dressed as women, and women dressed as men, or anyone dressed as anything, often with an additional cabaret of naked, painted, fairly voluptuous dancing women - The Binney Sisters. Any gender, with any background, of any age, or any species can win. A robot and a 75-year-old Russian woman have done so.

In the years since, the AMW has grown in scale and popularity, from a lark to an organized, expensive annual event. In fact, so threatening did the creators of the original Miss World find the upstart that several years in they brought an injunction against Logan - thrown out by a judge, thanks in part to defense lawyer Tony Blair. Themes run the gamut from "Wild" to "Universe" - this year's is "Elements" - and contestants, while not held to conventional pageant standards, take the challenges and competition seriously.

Not surprisingly, many are nostalgic for the event's early days, when whimsy reigned and it was made up of outsiders, misfits and friends. But perhaps the pageant's prominence is a good thing: it's disheartening to know that nearly forty years on, standards have not only not changed, but, if anything have calcified. (Get an eyeful the barely-there Jessica Simpson-designed bikinis this year's Miss Universe hopefuls will be almost wearing!) And lord knows dubious iterations like kiddie pageants have only taken off in that time. Says one contestant, Piers Atkinson (Miss Noma O'Void 1998),

"What on earth has happened to feminism? We're meant to be more liberated, but everyone's more generic. Everyone looks the same - like pole dancers. Blonde hair, big tits. It's a great look, if that's what you like, but not for everybody. I prefer style, poise, dignity and imagination."

If that involves rubber gloves, a shower cap and a lobster costume? So much the better.

Not Your Average Beauty Pageant [Guardian]
Alternative Miss World [Official Site]

Ed Note: We hear about and see so many stories that we can't find the time to comment on that we're gonna try something new: "Leftovers", a daily "accounting" of the stuff we had to leave behind. Let us know if you like it, and, obviously, feel free to click through on the stories and flesh them out for everybody.