I wasn't the typical pageant girl - I was a little more nerdy, and they gave me a voice. I created the Queen of the Universe pageant, which is charity-based, to benefit UNESCO. For me, the most important thing is that contestants have a charity-based platform or charity ambition.
I accidentally entered a youth pageant when I was 14. That's like a beauty pageant, but without the beauty. It was terrible.
Pleasure is a shadow, wealth is vanity, and power a pageant; but knowledge is ecstatic in enjoyment, perennial in frame, unlimited in space and indefinite in duration.
My family took me to church when I was like 4 years old, and I had to be in a pageant, and I was playing Jesus.
Bra-burning never happened. It was completely made up by the media. A couple of women protesting a Miss America pageant threw some bras into a garbage can, and somehow that became this longstanding idea of feminists as bra-burners.
I know that I've got big ears and a big forehead and that my hair sticks up. But I'm happy with myself. I'm not necessarily trying to win a beauty pageant here.
My ancestors fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War; I was raised in Natchez, Miss.; I performed in the Confederate Pageant for a decade; I dug ditches and loaded trucks with black men who taught me more than any book ever could; and I graduated from Ole Miss. Anyone who survived that is a de facto expert on the South.
Back in the day after I won my first pageant there was an agency that was getting me work on the side.
Shortly thereafter, some friends encouraged me to try out for the Miss South Carolina World beauty pageant. To my surprise, I won - and was sent to New York City to compete nationally.
The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning, a sitting on the throne at noon, a pageant in the evening.