Prego! New Miss Italy Would Love to Live in a World War

New Miss Italy makes a gaffe she’s paying for dearly on social media after answering “1942” when asked live on TV by judges what historical period she would like to live in.

She also answered ´Michael Jordan´ to the question ´Who is your favourite historical person?´.

Eighteen-year-old Alice Sabatini has drawn a torrent of online ridicule after telling her pageant judges her epoch of choice was 1942 - one of the darkest years of the Second World War and the Mussolini dictatorship.

Asked why she had chosen that year, the contestant from Lazio said she wanted to "live" the Second World War, noting she would not have had to fight as she is a woman.

“Well . . . to see really what the Second World War was like, since the books talk about it for page after page. I . . I want to live it. In any case I am a woman so I wouldn’t have had to do military service, so I would have been at home with the fear of . . .” she said, trailing off with a light laugh.

Miss Sabatini's strange desire to relive one of the continent's bloodiest years triggered a swift and savage online barrage of satirical memes. Twitter montages featured the brunette beauty queen smiling as she sashayed in her bikini through war-ravaged battlefields. An Italian satirist known as “The Jackal” produced a spoof video that quickly went viral.

But Miss Sabatini’s unorthodox response didn’t seem to damage her standing in the pageant, which she won based on both judge's scores and viewer call-in votes.

The jokes at the 18-year-old's expense prompted one of the pageant's judges, Vladimir Luxuria, a transgender actress and politician, to call for more comprehension of the gaffe. "Try to imagine the emotions of a young woman who had all the spotlight on her: She panicked."

Miss Sabatini on Tuesday defended her comments, saying she was nervous and caught off guard as the first contestant to be asked the question, but had meant to express admiration for her great grandmother, who is still alive and always recalls the Second World War.

“I would have liked to live through what she had gone through in those years,” Ms. Sabatini was reported as saying in an interview published in Urban Post. “For better and for worse.”