Sometimes it isn’t all beauty and grace. Sometimes beauty pageants are mired in scandal and left just trying to save face. Check out these biggest beauty pageant scandals.
Vanessa Williams
Miss America 1984. Williams broke down barriers by being the first African American Miss America, but was forced to resign after Penthouse published racy photos of her, which were taken before she was crowned. Williams was able to bounce back in a big way, moving on from the controversy to have a highly successful career.
Oxana Fedorova
Miss Universe 2002. This head-scratching controversy occurred shortly after Fedorova was crowned and the pageant claimed she was not fulfilling the responsibilities required of her crown. She claimed that the numerous responsibilities of her reign were interfering with her university studies. Of course, that didn’t stop rumors from flying that she was being dethroned because of a pregnancy, which Fedorova denied.
Ashley Harder
Miss New Jersey USA 2007. Harder was crowned Miss New Jersey USA in 2007, but after becoming pregnant, was forced to resign her crown before she was able to compete in the Miss USA pageant. The contest does not allow contestants to be pregnant or to have children.
Leona Gage
Miss USA 1957. Speaking of children… In 1957, Leona Gage was crowned Miss USA, but when nefarious rumors began to swirl, she had to come clean about a few fairly large details she’d fudged. Gage confessed she had been married twice, was a mother of two and was actually only 18 and not 21 as she had said on her application. Oops!
Tara Conner
Miss USA 2006. Conner was the picture of a perfect beauty queen until her hard partying and cocaine use caught up to her. Conner tested positive for cocaine, meth and heroin on top of underage drinking claims and getting caught kissing Miss Teen USA Katie Blair. However, she was allowed to keep her crown through the grace and benevolence of the great Donald Trump, who said, “After speaking to her, I saw not only a beautiful woman but a beautiful heart.” Thanks, Don.
Katie Rees
Miss Nevada USA 2007. Rees was crowned Miss Nevada USA in 2007, but after (surprise!) compromising photos were posted on the now-antiquated site Myspace, she was made to give up the title. Rees’ troubles didn’t stop there; a year later, she found herself in an altercation with a police officer, which led to her arrest. Yikes.
Marjorie Wallace
Miss World 1973. Wallace was the first American to be crowned Miss World in 1973, but just four months into her reign, she was found to have “failed to fulfill the basic requirements of the job.” How had she done that? She dated high-profile men like Tom Jones, footballer George Best and race car driver Peter Revson. When she was allegedly caught cheating on her then-fiancé (Revson) with Jones, the pageant took her crown.
Lauren Caitlin Upton (who now goes by Caite)
Miss South Carolina Teen USA 2007. A funny, viral moment turned ugly. What started as an indictment of the public education system turned ugly as Upton was unable to get away from her unintelligible response. She later admitted that the torment got so bad after the video went viral that she contemplated suicide, and that the confused comments haunted her for years.
Danielle Lloyd
Miss Great Britain 2006. Another Playboy problem. Lloyd was crowned Miss Great Britain in 2006, but was stripped of her title “following recent claims in the press and magazines and the publicity given on the Playboy website for their next issue.” But after the pageant realized Lloyd was appearing in an ad they were running, her crown was reinstated.
Carrie Prejean
Prejean received national attention following her response to a question about marriage equality during the 2009 Miss USA pageant. She said, “I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman.” She later said that she felt pressure to not talk about her true feelings and that she fully believed that if she had given a politically correct answer she would have won Miss USA 2009.
Laura Zúñiga
Miss Hispanic America 2008. In 2008, Zúñiga was arrested in Mexico, along with more than half a dozen others for possession of $53,000 in cash and several guns, including two AR-15 rifles and 16 cell phones. The defamed beauty queen claimed she and her boyfriend we going shopping in Colombia and Bolivia, which immediately set off alarm bells, as both countries are major suppliers of cocaine to Mexican drug cartels. Zúñiga eventually changed her story to allege that she was kidnapped by her boyfriend, who is a high-ranking official in the Juárez Cartel.
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