The Miss USA pageant was held last week. Sorry I didn’t cover it, I guess I just spaced out. Plus, there didn’t seem to be a big “story” there – Nia Sanchez/Miss Arizona won, she’s pretty and everyone seemed pretty happy. Except that in the wake of Nia Sanchez’s win, there has been a wonderful and funny conspiracy/scandal lodged against her. Unlike in years past, this scandal doesn’t involve a sex tape or dirty pictures. Nope. This year, people are saying Miss USA is a CARPETBAGGER. As in, she did beauty pageants in California for years but kept losing, so she moved to Nevada last year and established her residency so she could compete in what I’m assuming are Nevada’s more lax beauty pageants.
Miss USA 2014 Nia Sanchez found that out the hard way when almost immediately after she was crowned Sunday, rumors began to swirl that she’d somehow faked residency in Las Vegas in order to compete as Miss Nevada USA. But the beauty queen with a black belt insists that Sin City is her home, and on Thursday, she told Fox411 there was “no truth” to rumors saying otherwise.
The California-born brunette has lived “all over,” she said, which includes stints in Germany, Hong-Kong, the Middle East and Africa. She moved to Nevada nearly a year-and-a-half ago (primarily for modeling and promotional gigs) and actually chose not to compete in the 2013 Miss Nevada USA pageant because she figured out she’d “lived there just under six months.”
“I wanted to go into [competition] properly, so I didn’t compete last year,” she said. Instead, she supported her pal Chelsea Caswell who went on to win the 2013 title. “I didn’t want people to have anything to say,” Nia said, “I did it right…I waited over a year to compete when I felt like I was ready.”
She insists it’s fair for women to compete in a state different than the one they were born in “within the rules that the Miss Universe Organization has set up.”
“They set it up for a reason,” Nia said. “That’s why there’s the six month residency rule…[Nevada] is my home.”
A Miss Universe rep later said: “She met her requirements to compete. Nia is a great person and we know she’ll be a great title holder.” Done deal? Probably not. Because when Nia went on a radio show yesterday morning, she literally could not name the capital of her “home state” of Nevada.
So… yeah, while I don’t doubt that Nia Sanchez fulfilled all of the residency requirements needed to compete, I do think that she was following the letter but not the spirit of the law. I guess it’s fine. She doesn’t even know the capital of her state. Ugh. Miss USA, pull it together! Well, at least she wasn’t poor Miss Teen South Carolina. God, I love that video.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
What is a Carpetbagger?
It means she couldn’t win in CA, so she moved to NV so she could win. It usually refers to politicians who move from one area to another to win an election. Historically, it referred to Northerners who moved to the South to profit from reconstruction. It’s an unflattering term, implying that the person is an opportunist.
“In United States history, a carpetbagger was a Northerner (Yankee) who moved to the South after the U.S. Civil War, especially during the Reconstruction era (1865-1877), in order to profit from the instability and power vacuum that existed at this time.
The term carpetbagger was a pejorative term referring to the carpet bags (a fashionable form of luggage at the time) which many of these newcomers carried. The term came to be associated with opportunism and exploitation by outsiders. The term is still used today to refer to an outsider perceived as using manipulation or fraud to obtain an objective.”
from Wikipedia.
Carpetbagger is my favourite US-to-UK imported term. It’s a fabulous word and we should all use it more often.
*shrugs* seems a bit nit-picky.
Omg!!! I have not seen that Miss Teen video before. That was a AWESOME!! How did Mario Lopez not break out into laughter??? Epic.
OT: But anyone else notice that the beauty contestants always look better after the contest and year’s reign? I think it has to do with more subtle make-up application after they have been deprogrammed from beauty-bot land.
Oh, God, I couldn’t even finish watching the Miss Teen video. As for this scandal, if she followed the rules, I have no problem, and this is mean, but it don’t exactly fall off my chair when beauty pageant contestants aren’t super intellectuals.
Well good thing she’s pretty, right?
I hate beauty pageants.
Well, yes, I can’t believe they still even have them or anybody would enter them.
I find the Miss Teen video to be fascinating. It is so human, the nervous rambling and trying to dig yourself out but only getting deeper. You can almost see her brain scrambling for something, anything that would turn the answer around.
I don’t think Miss Nevada did anything wrong. People move around all of the time, it seems kind of unrealistic to expect people to be devoted to one state for all of their lives.
Iiiiiii, I couldn’t even finish it, I felt so sorry for her…maybe people don’t have maps? Omg
I don’t see the big deal, I am a geographic disaster too, btw her job is to be beautiful.
I’m pretty bad at geography, but I’ve always known the capital of the state I’ve lived in. Come on, that’s pretty dumb.
I can name a half dozen people who don’t know the capital of the state they live in. Especially if they haven’t lived there for years.
Beauty doesn’t have to overtake knowing basic things. If you are from a state you should at least know it’s capital.
If you’re representing the state, I feel like you should know the basics – especially if you’ve been accused of being a “carpetbagger” you should want to prove yourself (even though it sounds like she followed all the rules for residency).
These girls work with a team to prep for question/answer. The Miss USA contestants are those so lacking in talent, they can’t even twirl a baton to compete in Miss America.
I live in California and know what the capital of Nevada is. I think if you’re representing a state you should probably know what the capital of it is, even if Geography isn’t your strong suit.
Didn’t the civil war already answer our brutally long and important pageant questions?
Miss USA is a United States citizen. If the issue is with her statehood then that was a question to be asked during her Miss Nevada competition.
Sooo… what are we going to do to her? Ban her from the Scottsdale Costco? Can we send her to live with Kenya Moore for the length of her reign? No more bald eagle sammiches?
maybe it’s a pressure-freeze? i don’t do well under pressure. that’s why i always lose when i play the mathematical cardgame with my kids 🙂
but that’s also why i don’t do work that includes putting myself in those situations often.
why are these pageants still around? sigh.
It’s a flipping beauty pageant. Who cares.
I do find it sad though, that people no longer know state capitals, especially of the state they are representing or from.
Don’t a lot of them do this? I don’t think this is unusual. I think people are still ticked off about her comments on self defense and just looking for something else to complain about.
Wow. That video is embarrassing! Ive never even been to Nevada or on the West Coast at all, but even I know it’s state capital. But then again, I was a nerd that constantly read and studied maps as a child… Maybe our focuses were totally different 😉
Who cares? These pageant rules are superfluous. It’s a BEAUTY pageant, not the Nobel prize.
There are many US citizens do not know the capitals of each state much less know any US geography. Not really taught in schools anymore or shown any preference in learning them. Her not knowing the capital of Nevada doesn’t mean a thing.
If you are representing the State then at least you should know it. Everyone thought it was Reno (it’s Carson City).
How about the capitol of the state you live in?
It’s taught in 4th grade and forgotten by the time we’re young adults. My son just went over it this last school year. I was glad for the refresher to my own brain.
Ms. North Dakota was my bet, she was runner-up. She should’ve won.
I have a feeling she’s not the first pageant contestant to move around quite a lot so I’m not sure why it’s such a big deal in this instance. Not understanding why she’s having her state residency challenged so publicly when she’s a U.S. born citizen, which doesn’t seem to happen to the other contestants.
So what if she did move to a different state where she won pageants. It doesn’t matter if her new state’s pageants are lax in competition because she still beat Miss California, so….
I think the “controversy” wasn’t that she moved to Nevada it was that people are claiming she set up residency on paper only and continued to live and work in California. But its a beauty pageant its not really that serious.
You know it’s harder to compete in California. It seems like the most beautiful girls gather in California!!
I can’t believe they still hold these events.
Her tooth to bottom lip ratio is weirding me out. It almost looks like her top teeth somehow sit over her lip. How does that happen? Collagen I guess….