Vanessa Williams, Halle Berry and Kenya Moore all have this one thing in common having carved a place for themselves as Black women in the national spotlight through the Miss America and Miss USA pageants.
Berry, representing as Miss Ohio USA, didn’t win but, boy, did she make an impression!! Still, for a lot of Black women, pageants have not been the way to go. Speaking for myself, a competition where beauty is what women lead with doesn’t sound super progressive. I never had a burning desire as a journalist to cover a pageant, but when publicists reached out to me to cover Miss Universe hosted at the Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta, I couldn’t say no, especially when I found out that both Miss Iceland and Miss Ireland were Black.
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Despite not having a super high interest in this world of white sashes, perfect posture, and coiffed hair, I got up super early a few days before the big day and stood in line at the Marriott Marquis and waited for the majority of the 90 contestants to come out to cover this once-in-a-lifetime moment.
My main objective was to talk to all of the Black contestants, so I figured my load would be fairly light. It wasn’t. Given the number of countries in the world with a large number of Black nationals, along with countries like Ireland and Iceland with Black queens in full representation, my morning was more than full.
What I found was a group of some of the most incredible women and, in many ways, they were just like the women I admire the most. They were smart, stylish, confident, dynamic and powerful. I just loved them. They opened my mind to considerations of global beauty standards and how those standards are represented or not across the world.
