The local Facebook groups are all a twitter because the newly crowned Miss America is from Fort Smith, AR (even though she won as Miss Colorado).
Anyway, they are pointing out she's the first active duty service member to win the title. She's a Second Lieutenant in the USAF.
The pic they're using of her in uniform, she's in OCPs, but instead of a spice brown vertical bar for rank, she has what looks to be horizontal Captain's (O-3) bars.
Can any of you Zoomies shed some light on that? She's also showing off one of those ribbon pins (you know, like the <inserttopichere> awareness ribbons) in the pic, so I'm wondering if it's intentional to skirt uniform regs.
I'd post a pic but I'm on my phone.
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The artist formerly known as AllenInWV
Posts: 16339 | Location: Harrison, AR | Registered: February 05, 2004
Cadet Captain rank. That photo is from her time at the Air Force Academy. The purple ribbon is for pancreatic cancer, from which her mother died the year before she began at the academy.
Originally posted by sigmonkey: I think she ran as "Miss Colorado" since she was living in Colorado at the Academy.
Correct. She grew up in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and started at the Air Force Academy in Colorado in 2019. She then won the "Miss Academy 2023" pageant her senior year at the Air Force Academy, which made her eligible to compete for "Miss Colorado 2023", which she also won right around the time she was graduating from the academy. This then made her eligible to compete for Miss America 2024, despite the fact that she had graduated from the academy in the interim and no longer resided in Colorado.