“And I go, ‘Oh, how?'” “We want a victor, don’t get me wrong, but all of the girls that are there are the best of the best in the country”.
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Miss Alabama’s Hayley Barber performed a tap dance to the jazz song “Big Noise from Winnetka”, in Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall during the second of three nights of preliminaries at the 2017 Miss America Competition. “It’s such an honor to be able to walk on that stage in the first place”, Burgess, 22, said of her win, which earned her a $2,000 scholarship.
After being crowned Miss Missouri in June, O’Flaherty told CNN that was overwhelmed by the support she’s received. The next Miss America will be crowned Sunday night.
“We would watch the parade from the deck of a hotel and we’d look down into the cars and see some of the women wearing slippers or being barefoot, and we started calling out, ‘Show us your shoes!’ ” he recalled.
While Cantrell and Ford won Miss Georgia pageants in 2015 and 2016 respectively, Jackson and Sims took less direct routes to the Miss America pageant.
Lesbians have been more visible in pageants lately. Jessica she also competed for the Miss Georgia Outstanding Teen title this year. She came out as a lesbian in 2014.
All four Georgia natives competed in the Miss Georgia Pageant together in 2015, said Oz Roberts, a former Miss Georgia Pageant board member who is now at the national competition as a photographer.
Miss America contestants, including Miss Mississippi Laura Lee Lewis, change clothes as many as four times a day while the pageant is underway.
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Josh Randle, chief operating officer of the Miss America Organization, said the pageant reflects an evolving America.
