The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E11: Miss saHHara Crowns Queens

The Girlfriends: Untouchable - Season 4

iHeartPodcasts and Novel

True Crime, Relationships, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.2 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Miss saHHara was born to be a beauty pageant queen. As a child at home in Nigeria she would wrap herself in a mosquito net and sashay along a make-believe cat walk, delivering inspirational speeches to an imagined audience. But when she grew up and started to compete, she found that not only was she rejected from all the mainstream pageants she tried to enter, even trans beauty pageants seemed to celebrate all the cliched cisgender beauty norms. So, Miss saHHara decided to do something about it: She founded Miss Trans Global, a pageant where everybody is welcome, and where your advocacy and community work mean much more than the lightness of your skin or the bounciness of your hair. The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts. For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:04.0	Hey, girlfriends.
0:05.5	I just wanted to give you a heads-up that this episode includes conversations about domestic violence, transphobia, and mentions of attempted suicide.
0:14.0	But if you do listen, I'll take you on a rollicking ride into the world of glitz, glamour and beauty pageants. Oh, and there's going to be some swearing as per yuge.
0:24.6	I was in the top tree.
0:29.6	I cannot believe I'm in the top three.
0:31.6	Miss Sahara is standing on a stage in Thailand.
0:36.6	She's wearing a long golden dress that sparkles in the spotlight. Miss Sahara is standing on a stage in Thailand.
0:41.3	She's wearing a long golden dress that sparkles in the spotlight and a sash with big green letters that say Nigeria.
0:46.7	I didn't think I would ever wear the crown, the main crown, but I could win this.
0:51.8	Next to Miss Sahara are two women in equally long and golden dresses, with Thailand and Lebanon sashes.
0:59.6	They are the final contestants at Miss International Queen 2011, the world's biggest beauty pageant for trans women.
1:08.6	Big sets, lighting, backup dances up to like 50 performing at once on stage.
1:15.4	It's incredible.
1:16.8	The set looks like a big Roman temple, with a winding staircase adorned with white statues holding candles.
1:24.8	The crowd is electric because the stakes are high.
1:30.1	You win $10,000.
1:32.8	Only one girl win that $10,000.
1:35.6	The hosts are getting everyone ready for the final round.
1:39.3	Each of the three remaining contestants has to draw a question from the judges and answer it.
1:45.4	Ms. Sahara's question is, other than your parents, who is your idol and what have you learned
1:50.6	from that person?
	...

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