Whereas the 2023 Miss Universe pageant, recognized for its inclusion transgender contestants, will nonetheless happen this Saturday, the JKN World Group behind it filed for chapter simply days earlier than the occasion.
Thai enterprise tycoon and transgender activist Anne Jakrajutatip of the JKN World Group purchased the group for $20,000,000 in 2022.
Jakrajutatip, who has worldwide fame as a transgender superstar, described the acquisition on the time as “a robust, strategic addition to our portfolio.”
However a yr later, the franchise itself seems unstable.
A public doc despatched to the Inventory Alternate of Thailand from JKN World Group declared “JKN World Group Public Firm Restricted (the ‘Firm’) has filed a petition for enterprise rehabilitation with the Central Chapter Courtroom below the Chapter Act B.E. 2483 (1940) (as amended) (the ‘Chapter Act’) on November, 8 2023, the Central Chapter Courtroom has subsequently issued an order to simply accept the petition for enterprise rehabilitation of the Firm on November 9, 2023.”
The Miss Universe Group printed a subsequent announcement declaring that amid “the present monetary scenario” that “We affirm that Miss Universe 2023 might be held in El Salvador on 18 November 2023, the place a high notch expertise supplied to our followers will stay our high priorities.” [sic]
This yr’s Miss Universe pageant is slated to function a minimum of two transgender individuals who establish as girls for the primary time, Miss Portugal, a flight attendant named Marina Machete, and Rikkie Kollé, who’s the primary transgender Miss Netherlands.
This follows Spain’s Ángela Ponce, who was the pageant’s first trans contestant general in 2018, however didn’t advance to the finals.
Machete launched a video in September lamenting that “rising ranges of transphobia and intolerance are alarming worldwide.”
Nonetheless, Machete declared it was “heartwarming” to see “that the Miss Universe group is so inclusive, breaking boundaries and making a platform for ladies not solely to empower them however as effectively to create actual adjustments in their very own communities.”
“Trans girls are girls, full cease,” the Miss Universe Group advised CNN in October, following Miss Portugal’s crowning. “We’re right here to have fun girls, full cease. This has been true for greater than a decade, and we’re proud to have made this variation very early on, in comparison with different applications.”
JKN World group and the Miss Universe Group have but to answer requests for remark from Fox Information Digital.