Miss Universe has officially suspended all of the organizers of Miss USA due to extreme outrage and backlash in the wake of the yearly Miss USA pageant.
Those taking part in the 2022 Miss USA pageant were sent correspondence from Amy Emmerich, the CEO of Miss Universe, informing them that Miss Brand, which officially hosts the pageant, has been suspended from working with the pageant.
“After thorough deliberation, Miss Universe Organization has decided to suspend Miss Brand immediately,” expressed Emmerich. “Miss Universe will be taking over the Miss USA program while a comprehensive third-party investigation is conducted.”
“We are appreciative of the cooperation we’ve seen from Miss USA Director Crystle Stewart as we work through this process,” stated Emmerich.
As the director of Miss brand and a previous winner of Miss USA back in 2008 prior to taking over the running of the pageant in 2020, Stewart has been the target of much criticism in the wake of the pageants contestants alleging that the pageant heavily favored its eventual winner, Miss texas, R’Bonney Gabriel. After Gabriel’s win was made official and she walked around the stage, many of the other contestants, in a heavily unprecedented move, just left the stage.
“You can see them exiting the stage before she even turns around. All of them. Not one of them stays on stage to congratulate her or run and hug her,” expressed one former contestant, Jasmine Jones, via a post to social media. “In my pageantry opinion, something was off about that. In my ten years as a contestant, I’ve never seen the girls walk off stage and not congratulate the girls that’s won.”
“I am at a loss of words since it goes to show there were many signs that the winner was already predetermined and myself, amongst all my other sisters, weren’t even given the chance to lose,” exclaimed Miss New Jersey, Alexandra Lakhman.
Heather Elley, known as Miss New York, stated, “The way I entered this pageant and gave it every last bit of my heart and soul. I had limiting beliefs of the outcome and did everything to ignore ALL the signs,” reported Yahoo News.
Mikala Mcghee, Miss Missouri, made the claim that the win for Gabriel had been already decided due to her being a Filipina-American, and the Filipina community has a massive pageant fanbase.
“I think that [Miss USA] are in a state where they are trying to revamp and re-glamorize pageantry here in the United States, because we’ve been seeing a constant drop off in enrollment for pageants, and not just in the Miss USA system,” she stated.
“Not to say that Gabriel couldn’t have gone out here and won this on her own, but I think that she was a Houstonian — everyone, again, from the Miss Brand … and most from Miss USA Organization, including Crystle herself, are from Houston. They’re Houston natives,” Mcghee went on.
Heather Lee O’Keefe, Miss Montana, also agreed as she explained to The Daily Mail the “inherent bias” for any pageant entrant from Texas.
“I think this is a big issue that a lot of us are trying to bring light to is the fact [Stewart] owns so much of the organization. She owns the main organization, Miss USA, and she also owns the main sponsor of the organization which is a big issue we all have with it,” expressed O’Keefe.
“[I heard] they were saying that there was a sabotage list, or that R’Bonney has already been preselected to win,” stated McGhee. “I was completely ignoring it, because I was like this is a competition. I get it, you know. Stress can be high, you know, it becomes a little bit of like the intimidation factor. Are you trying to throw people off their game?”
“You know I was really looking at it kind of from a sports world perspective,” she went on. “But again, when you get there, and you start seeing some of the behavior that was displayed at Miss USA week, you know it made me take a step back, and really kind of reconsider. Well, what really was going on was, were these rumors true? And if so, why are we wasting our time?”
“The only thing I know was that there was clear and convincing favoritism toward her in the competition and leading up to the competition. She received more resources than we did. That is the root of the issue,” concluded O’Keefe.