A photo featuring a charity trip of a beauty pageant’s contestants has spread on the Internet recently and has aroused fury among many people who criticized that the trip was just a trick to promote the contest, as well as the beauties’ names.

On July 29, local newswire ngoisao.net, the organizer of the annual Miss Ngoi Sao contest, posted an article and a series of photos featuring the pageant’s contestants in a trip to the southern province of Long An to hand over gifts for local disadvantaged seniors.

However, instead of praising the beauties for their act, many netizens were angered by a picture showing the contestants radiantly sitting at a row of tables with bottles of water, while the elderly only sit on plastic chairs and have no water to drink.

There was an outcry over the photo among people who accused that the trip was only to help the beauties raise their reputation and didn’t care about the elderly. Many agreed that the contest’s organizers, as well as the girls, showed little respect to the seniors.

“Organizers must think that those elderly aren’t familiar with bottled water or tables so they arranged the seats like that,” a netizen satirized.

The photo has spread rapidly on social networks, earning a lot of opposition from Internet users. The newswire later took down the picture from the article.

This is not the first time a beauty pageant has been criticized for participants’ actions in doing charity. Last October, a trip to an orphanage by 20 winners of Miss Vietnam 2010 was attacked for poor planning that led to a modest donation and lukewarm activities.

On the trip to the Thuy Xuan Center in Hue on October 3, the beauty queens donated only VND1.5million (US$75) to cover meals for 110 people - 70 orphans and 40 delegation members, instead of just 30, as the center had expected.

The beauties have also been criticized for “acting” while gardening with the kids instead of spending five hours cleaning the orphanage, gardening, cooking, and taking the kids to school and eating with them.