Bod For A Burqa?

By Rebecca Winters

In a country where ankle baring is saucy, a spokeswoman in a red-hot bikini is a candidate for eternal damnation. VIDA SAMADZAI, 25, an Afghan-born college student whose family fled to the U.S. in 1996, is the first woman in 31 years to compete in a beauty contest as Miss Afghanistan. When Samadzai paraded in her native country's sash at the recent Miss Earth pageant in the Philippines, the Afghan supreme court condemned the leggy Pashtun beauty queen to hell, calling such pageants "totally un-Islamic" and against "tradition, human honor and dignity." Ah, if only all Afghan women enjoyed the dignity Western women are afforded: to be judged not by the hem of their burqas but by the size of their breasts.