Canada's Little Miss Perfect

Beauty queens who blather on about world peace are twoa-penny, so my friends' reactions when I told them about Nazanin Afshin-Jam were predictably cynical. 'She was a Red Cross worker who entered Miss World and became a pop star to give her human-rights work a higher profile?' they scoffed. 'Yeah, right. I bet she loves children and animals, too.'

 

The CV of Iranian-born, Canadian-bred Afshin-Jam certainly reads almost like a joke. At 27 she has a pilot's licence and a degree in international relations and political science, which she funded by modelling. She was Miss Canada 2003 and runner-up in that year's Miss World. This year she postponed the release of her debut album to campaign to save a young Iranian woman from death row, of which more later.

In person she doesn't disappoint. We meet in London, where she is on a typically multitasking visit to promote her album and to speak at a Fabian Society debate on Iran. Dressed in a severe black trouser suit, lightened by a funky jewelled T-shirt, she is friendly and charming, but with a demure, almost old-fashioned air that puts her a million miles from the cliché of the air-kissing pageant princess. I put it to her that it seems a bit odd that someone who fights for Iranian women's rights took part in such a blatantly sexist event.

'I had a lot of criticism from feminists and fundamentalists about that,' Afshin-Jam replies in her earnest fashion. 'And I did worry I was going to play into the whole problem of body image among younger girls. But I decided beauty shouldn't be a dirty word. If I'd been an architect, I could have used my blessings to create an orphanage. My beauty meant I was able to bring attention to a cause. It's calculated so that people get the message about human rights. You've got to be within the system to beat the system.'

As she warms to the theme, her brown eyes narrow and I see a flash of the determination that drives her. 'People say it's degrading for women, but on the other side it's about owning one's sexuality. There's no Miss Iran, so I feel I'm indirectly representing them. I can wear what I want, I can sing what I want, I can show my skin on the beach, and why shouldn't I?'