*now it's getting weird* Miss Puerto Rico insists outfit, makeup tainted

[underpants]

Newly crowned Miss Puerto Rico Ingrid Marie Rivera insisted in an exclusive interview Wednesday that she wasn’t just imagining the redness, itching and swelling she says she experienced during last week’s pageant in San Juan.





“It’s not a nervous reaction. It’s not made up. It’s a beauty pageant, why would I do that to myself?” she told TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira during a live interview in New York.

After the pageant finals last Friday, Rivera had suggested that someone had put pepper spray on her evening gown, bikini and makeup brushes, causing her to break out in hives. But, as NBC’s Kerry Sanders reported from San Juan, investigators are skeptical that pepper spray was involved and other contestants have wondered why no swelling or redness was evident while she was on stage.

Sanders also reported that there was jealousy among some of the more than 20 other contestants, who thought Rivera had an unfair advantage because she had been a judge of the pageant the previous year and now was a contestant.

Rivera said she told security guards it might be pepper spray, but turned over the gown she wore in the finals and the makeup brushes to police for forensic investigation. She said she had first noticed something on her clothing and brushes during the preliminary round of the competition, when she re-did her makeup and changed from a bikini to an evening gown.

“I used a brush to do a bit of my face with powder and also to brush my chest, because it was a strapless dress,” she said. “After less than a minute, I began itching, burning, redness, swollen — horrible feeling.”

[Deep13]

1. Is she going swimming in that hat and high heels?

"It’s a beauty pageant, why would I do that to myself?"

I can actually think of a few reasons. Of course that does not mean she did.

[NewJeffCT]

2. she looks very, um, sincere to me

but, who knows what the real story is?

[redqueen]

3. That photographer did a bad job on the pool shot.

Using a pic where she's obviously not allowing her legs to touch just looks bad.