OBS: Miss USA, Olivia Culpo Wins Miss Universe 2012

After days of exhausting competition, a 20-year-old Boston University sophomore and a self-described ‘cellist-nerd’ was crowned Miss Universe yesterday-Wednesday.

Olivia Culpo beat out 88 other beauty queens to take the title from Leila Lopes of Angola during the two-hour competition at the Planet Hollywood casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

Culpo wore a tight navy blue mini-dress with a sequined bodice as she walked on stage for the competition’s opening number.  She later changed into a purple and blue bikini, and donned a wintery red velvet gown with a plunging neckline.

During the final question, Miss Universe 2010, Ximena Navarrete, asked Olivia, “What is something that you have done, that you will never do again?” How does one respond to that land mine?

“First I’d like to start off by saying that every experience, no matter what it is, good or bad, you’ll learn from it. That’s just life,” she said, deftly.

“But something I’ve done that I’ve probably regretted would be picking on my siblings growing up because you appreciate them so much more when you’re older.”

“Everybody fights with their siblings, right?! But I don’t regret it.”

And the rest, as they say, is history. Those once picked-on siblings – and rumored boyfriend Ryan Lochte – are no doubt proud of Olivia right now.

“One thing I feel people don’t know about me is that I’m really easy-going,” she said.

“Any joke, I’ll get it. I mean, I think a lot of the times they think of beauty queens as almost being plastic, but I can take jokes and I can take anything.”

“I’m just a normal person.”