Eighteen-year-old Alice Sabatini has drawn a torrent of online ridicule after telling the pageant judges that the historical period she would like to have lived in was 1942.

The answer shocked the judges, but what followed was even more shocking.

Asked why she had chosen that year, Miss Italy 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.

But Miss Sabatini’s strange response didn’t seem to cost her since she won the title based on both judge’s scores and viewer call-in votes.