UNM beauty uses looks for charity

Sita Huber is absolutely gorgeous.

The UNM student’s eighth-place showing at a national beauty contest confirms that. The contest, “Mansion Madness,” featured more than 2,000 contestants who competed to benefit cancer research, and Huber barely missed out on the next round by 40 votes.
She was voted into the top 52, a number the company chose in order to create a playing-card deck, and flew to Atlantic City to participate in a bikini contest.

“In Atlantic City they had a bikini competition, and I was kind of like, ‘I would never do something like that,’ you know, ‘This is crazy!’” she said. “But I thought, ‘Hey, why not? I thought maybe this will help me be a bit more confident.”
Confidence is not an area Huber should have a problem in.

Aside from her looks, the psychology major will graduate from UNM with honors. Before graduation, she plans to study abroad in Germany and attend graduate school for behavioral and cognitive psychology.

Thomas, Huber’s father, said he had reservations about his daughter entering a contest that would require her to post lingerie pictures on its website. But he overcame his concerns and supported her.

“It’s not how I see my daughter, but it is definitely a part of her world. She is an adult young woman,” he said. “I actually got pretty involved myself supporting her. For almost a month, I don’t know how many times I got on the computer and voted for Sita … I think it was a great thing for her. The whole family got involved, even family as far as Germany, India and Thailand, so it was a great experience.”

Huber said contestants’ families were actively involved in the contest, and that made her feel better about participating. She said she was encouraged about contributing to charity.

“It definitely has a lot to do with the breast cancer research,” Huber said. “If it was just a site where you could go check out girls and there wasn’t really a point to it, I probably wouldn’t have done it.”

And she said she was excited to be the first UNM woman to participate in “Mansion Madness.”

“It inspired me because I felt like I was maybe something bigger than myself. I had the opportunity to represent my school, and I’ve never really had that feeling of doing something, representing something bigger than myself,” she said. “When I did the bikini contest, (the sash) had your name and ‘UNM.’ I definitely felt proud to have the UNM logo.”

On top of beauty, intelligence, school pride and an interest in charity work, Huber can add humility to the list.

“I think it’s a great cause, and people like looking at attractive girls,” she said. “Not that I’m saying that I’m super attractive, or anything, but the girls on there are really pretty, and they’re really nice. So I’m very honored to be a part of it.”