After intense backlash, Trinidad and Tobago Miss World officially deleted a now-viral video from its Facebook page, which featured 2021 contestant Jeanine Brandt.

Brandt remains at the centre of growing controversy in the twin-island republic as irate social media users accused the 25-year-old of tarnishing the nation’s image for ‘pageantry points’.

The drama presumably started over the weekend when Trinbagonians began sharing clips of Brandt’s speech from the recently postponed Miss World grand coronation show in Puerto Rico. By Sunday (January 16), with commentary raging and emotions high, the Facebook video was taken down.

The young beauty queen was among 16 contestants who took part in the December 11 Miss World ‘Head to Head Final’ broadcast on YouTube in San Juan, where Brandt spoke about the pervasiveness of poverty in Trinidadian society.

According to her, the hardships many girls face in Trinidad and Tobago are indescribable and should not be something children need to consider in their formative years.

“In my country, thousands of children live in poverty. Little girls sleep on the cold ground in makeshift homes; they have no access to running water, electricity, they cannot attend school, they have no access to healthcare, and they don’t even know where their next meal is coming from,” Brandt began.

“No child deserves to be living under these conditions and, I believe with the COVID-19 pandemic, it has drastically increased poverty in the world today,” she added.

In recognising the impact in her home country, Brandt said she formed her Brandt Beauty Foundation to “break the cycle of poverty among these families and these little girls, and give them opportunities to realise their dreams”.

“There are so many issues that we are facing right now and I decided to embark on several projects throughout my country because there is no one solution to these problems,” the makeup entrepreneur explained.

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What was supposed to be a sombre but optimistic moment backfired disastrously on social media, however, as Trini Twitter and Facebook users slammed Brandt as an opportunist, using the plight of poverty to paint the Caribbean country in a negative light internationally.

“It is very sad. The contestant in attempting to promote herself in light of being charitable did a disservice to [the] country by presenting a picture which is not an accurate status. Some of the blame must be apportioned to those that have been guiding her along the way. This is so unfortunate indeed,” wrote Joan Harrison on Facebook.

Hanging their heads in collective shame, some likened the Brandt fiasco to Nicki Minaj’s anti-vaccine antics which triggered a direct response from the Trinidadian Ministry of Health last year.

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Others came to Brandt’s defence, arguing that while she may have ‘over-exaggerated’ her claims by failing to provide statistics, there was truth in her presentation and poverty in Trinidad and Tobago was indeed a real problem.

Many more felt the outrage stemmed from privilege as Twitter user @judelegendre opined: “Not privileged Trini Twitter dragging this woman as if there isn’t some truth to what she is saying. Makes me wonder if the issue is what is being said or y’all have a problem with who is saying it.”

“We need to stop judging her because many of us are blinded to the harsh realities outside here… How about we as a people be supportive instead of being critical of her!!!” asked another woman.

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A few within the Trini Twitterati went even further to say that Brandt’s rhetoric could serve as the perfect opportunity to challenge the shortcomings of Trinidad and Tobago in dealing with poverty.

The United Nations Development Programm (UNDP), in its 2020 Human Development Report on Trinidad and Tobago, found that 0.6 per cent of the population (some 9,000 people) are “multidimensionally poor”, while an additional 3.7 per cent (or roughly 51,000) were classified as “vulnerable to multidimensional poverty”.

Trinidad, with a multidimensional poverty index (MPI) value of 0.002, was statistically better than Jamaica (0.018) and the wider Latin America and Caribbean region (0.031).

“The breadth of deprivation (intensity) in Trinidad and Tobago, which is the average deprivation score experienced by people in multidimensional poverty, is 38.0 per cent. The MPI, which is the share of the population that is multidimensionally poor, adjusted by the intensity of the deprivations, is 0.002. Jamaica has an MPI value of 0.018,” according to the UNDP report.