Right from the early days of joining, Huong Giang showed strong media attraction. She won the "Stars World Famous Award" category - an award for contestants with outstanding influence on global social networks, calculated by interactions and votes from international audiences on the official platforms of Miss Grand International.
In the "World's Choice Award" poll - the award that helps contestants win a special slot into the Top 18 overall, Huong Giang also continuously maintained the leading position. At one point, the representative of Vietnam held about 40% of the total votes, surpassing many strong opponents from Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Not only attracting attention in official voting charts, Huong Giang also appeared in many prediction charts of international beauty websites such as Sash Factor or Missosology. Many websites assessed her as one of the contestants with good stage experience, knowing how to create media effects and maintain a stable recognition throughout the competition.
In the first semi-final night held in Bangkok (Thailand), Huong Giang continued to score points in the Evening Gown competition. The beauty wore a purple fishtail design studded with crystals and 3D flowers, combined with the effect of two butterfly wings on stage.
Her performance received positive feedback thanks to her proactive demeanor, dress handling and camera interaction ability. Huong Giang achieved an average score of 9.16, in the Top 10 contestants with the highest evening gown scores in the semi-final night. Notably, judge Jojo gave the Vietnamese representative a perfect score of 10/10, while judge Omar also gave her 9.5 points in this competition.
However, controversy began to erupt when Huong Giang entered the Bare Face challenge. In this competition, the contestants had to directly remove makeup on stage in front of the judges and the audience.
Huong Giang appeared with a face that was almost no different from when applying makeup. Many viewers commented that she still maintained sharp features, smooth skin and confident demeanor even with a bare face.
However, the public score board of the competition created mixed reactions. While other judges gave quite high scores such as Jojo giving 9.8 points, Abena giving 10 points, judge Omar only gave Huong Giang 5 points. This score was half the highest she received and pulled the average score down to 8.09.
Immediately after that, many debates appeared on social networks about the scoring criteria for the bare face part. Many opinions said that the score of 5 was too strict, especially when Huong Giang's overall face was still rated as fresh and with few flaws.
Another part of the audience believes that the score difference between the judges is making the bare face performance the most controversial topic of MGI All Stars this year.
The final of the competition takes place on May 30.
