The Miss Italy competition will not allow transgender women to compete, with its patron saying that contestants “must be a woman from birth,” weeks after Miss Netherlands crowned its first transgender winner.

“Lately, beauty contests have been trying to make the news by also using strategies that I think are a bit absurd,” Miss Italy Official Patron Patrizia Mirigliani said this month during an interview with Radio Cusano, Il Primato Nazionale reported, according to a translation from Google.

“Since it was born, my competition has foreseen in its regulation the clarification according to which one must be a woman from birth. Probably because, even then, it was foreseen that beauty could undergo modifications, or that women could undergo modifications, or that men could become women,” Mirigliani added, Il Primato Nazionale reported.

[Viva Italia! ~ Beege]