9 Miss America & Miss USA Winners Whose Reigns Were Less Than Golden
Uneasy lies the head that wears a tiara. The newest Miss America says she has experienced horrific bullying online, and unfortunately, she’s not the first titleholder from the Miss America and Miss USA pageants to experience a crushing low after her crowning moment. Here are other beauty queens from the two pageants who’ve endured ugly outcomes after their big wins.
Bess Myerson
Myerson became Miss America 1945 and the pageant’s first Jewish winner but faced antisemitism as she toured the country, with some country clubs and hotels refusing to host her. “I felt so rejected,” she once said, per The New York Times. “Here I was, chosen to represent American womanhood, and then America treated me like this.”
Mary Leona Gage
Gage was crowned Miss USA 1957 but lost her title, tiara, prize money, and studio contracts upon the revelation that she’d been married, had children, and was three years older than previously believed. When she returned home, she started getting mean-spirited mail. “I think one half of the U.S. hated me,” she told The Baltimore Sun in 2005.
Vanessa Williams
Williams broke new ground as Miss America’s first Black winner when she won the 1984 title. Not everyone was happy to see her win, however: The future Ugly Betty star received death threats, as she told ABC News in 2015. Then, 10 months into her reign, Williams was forced to resign as Penthouse planned to publish nude photos for which she had posed years earlier, and it took three decades for the pageant to apologize.
Katie Harman
Harman, Miss America 2002, was one of the beauty queens who spoke out about the pageant in the 2023 A&E docuseries Secrets of Miss America. “When I won, I was encouraged that the Miss America program was truly the place for celebrating an authentic version of today’s woman,” she said, per Yahoo! Entertainment. “But my experience taught me the exact opposite.”
Teresa Scanlan
Scanlan, who won the title of Miss America 2011 at age 17, said in Secrets of Miss America that seeing negative comments online after her victory was like a “punch in the gut,” per Yahoo! Entertainment. She described feeling pageant organizers weren’t concerned that a winner of her age would have such an intense workload and travel schedule. And she recalled no longer being able to access contentment and joy in the way she had before.
Nina Davuluri
After becoming the first Indian-American Miss America when she won the 2014 title, Davuluri was barraged with racist tweets and social media comments, some of which mistakenly identified her as Arab or Muslim. “Unfortunately, I was prepared,” she told NBC News in 2014. “However, I can honestly say that for every one negative tweet, comment, or post, there were hundreds if not thousands of people who had positive words of encouragement and support all across the country and world for that matter.”
Cara Mund
In 2018, that year’s Miss America wrote a letter to her predecessors to call out Gretchen Carlson, then the chair of the Miss America Organization, and Regina Hopper, then the organization’s CEO. “Our chair and CEO have systematically silenced me, reduced me, marginalized me, and essentially erased me in my role as Miss America in subtle and not-so-subtle ways on a daily basis,” Mund wrote, per the Associated Press. “The sheer accumulation of the disrespect, passive-aggressive behavior, belittlement, and outright exclusion has taken a serious toll.”
Noelia Voigt
Miss USA 2023 stepped down from her post in 2024, and in a resignation letter obtained by NBC News, she alleged there was a “toxic work environment within the Miss USA organization that, at best, is poor management and, at worst, is bullying and harassment.” She also posted a lengthy statement on Instagram, and the first letters from the first 11 sentences combine to spell “I AM SILENCED.”
Cassie Donegan
Donegan, Miss America 2026, was bullied online after performing “God Bless America” at the 2026 MLB All-Star Game. “I never in my life thought a 10-second clip would lead to so many people in comments and in my DMs telling me that I should do the world a service by ending my own life so no one has to look at me,” she told People. “That’s pretty extreme. … I have no idea [what inspired the bullying]. I wish I could pinpoint something. But I don’t know, genuinely. I’ve had the honor and the privilege of getting to sing in some pretty incredible places with audiences that were just as large and did not garner this much negativity.”
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