LAST NIGHT WAS the first instalment of Ireland’s very own ‘lovely girls’ competition – and our own Michael Freeman had the craic liveblogging it here. It’s Sineád O’Carroll’s turn on the #RoT liveblog tonight, should you be so inclined.

Whether you agree with The Rose of Tralee or not, you might have some thoughts on these alternative pageants:

Miss Penitentiary: Don’t let a little thing like being in jail stop you from entering.

In Brazil, several prisons take part in the annual Miss Brasilia Penitentiary pageant.

The inmates are judged by a modelling agency but there can only be one winner. Sadly the prize is just a crown and not a get-out-of jail-free-card.

Miss Penitentiary 2011 -inmate Raira Paixao. (Eraldo Peres/Press Association Images)

Miss Atom: – Passionate about nuclear energy – this is the pageant for you. The International Miss Atom Contest is a social project of Nuclear.Ru for all female employees within the nuclear industries of the former USSR countries.

The website states that Miss Atom 2011 goes to places where nuclear power plants are to be built soon. It also states that the “prettiest girls of the nuclear industry will be the first robins of our peaceful atom in these countries”.

(Via YouTube/RussiaToday)

Miss Dairy Cow Pageant: While China’s Yu Wenxia was crowned Miss World 2012 over the weekend, it’s the Miss Dairy Cow Pageant that has people talking. Posing next to dairy cows wearing masks, these bikini models in the Shanxi Province of China were there to promote the competition which pitted 200 cows against each other based on pedigree, looks and milk.

(ChinaFotoPress/Press Association Images)

Miss Pregnant: Pageants are not just reserved for the flat of stomach. Rod Ryan’s Annual Pre-Labor Day Pregnant Bikini Contest has bikini-clad mothers-to-be with their baby bumps out on show.

The Daily Mail reports that the rules of the contest state that the contestants must be due within three months and the first prize winner gets $800 in gift vouchers, a digital camera and a teeth-whitening treatment.

(Via YouTube/945thebuzz)

Some competitions have more positive intentions like these:

Ms Senior America: You don’t have to be a spring chicken to enter a pageant – not in the US anyway. This pageant is for lovely ladies over 60.

“Thank you for letting me give back for the second part of my life,” said the 2009 winner who handed her crown over to Ms Virgin Islands in 2010.

Ms New York Senior America finalist 2011 Kathleen Keating said the pageant which started over 30 years ago is for the older generation who are more elegant and self assured in the latter years of their lives.

(Via YouTube/BuckLondonProduction)

Miss Landmine: With their slogan “everyone has the right to be beautiful” this pageant was created by artist Morten Traavik hoping to raise awareness of the struggles that land-mine survivors face.

The competition invites women wounded in explosions caused by land mines to take part.

Speaking on the website about the 2009 competition Traavik states that the first prize is a specially-designed and customised prosthesis from a leading Norwegian clinic, worth around $15000. He also states the reason he came up with competition is he had “an itch to do something to save the world a little”.

However, NBC reports that the Cambodian government banned the pageant as it was “insulting to the disabled”.

Winner of the Miss Landmine pageant in Luanda, Angola, Augusta Urica. (Image via Shayne Robinson/PA Images)

Pics & video: 6 bizarre moments from last night’s Rose of Tralee>

Read: As it happened: The Rose of Tralee Finals, Day One>