Air Force Officer Madison Marsh Crowned Miss America
WaPo (“This year’s Miss America is an active-duty Air Force officer“):
A second lieutenant in the Air Force is swapping her helmet for a crown after winning the title of Miss America 2024.
Madison Marsh prevailed Sunday as Colorado’s representative, becoming the first active-duty Air Force officer to win the pageant, according to the Miss Colorado website.
“Congratulations to our very own Airman,” the Air Force tweeted as Marsh won the event.
Her Miss Colorado biography is not typical of a pageant contender: “In her free time, Madison enjoys flying planes, cooking pasta, and reading,” it says.
Fifty-one contestants — from each state and Washington, D.C. — competed for the 2024 crown, a title the pageant calls “a 365-day opportunity,” with “community service” at its center.
“When I put on my uniform, I serve, and I represent our country,” Marsh told the Harvard Crimson student newspaper ahead of Sunday’s finale. “When I put on the crown and sash, I’m serving, representing my community.”
Marsh told the newspaper that she hopes her story “can tell the young girls that you don’t have to play a conventional role.”
The Air Force Academy championed Marsh throughout the competition, sharing a photo of her standing alongside a plane in her uniform to its Instagram account, with a caption that read, “from the flight line to the spotlight.”
During the competition, Marsh said she hoped to “break stereotypes about women in pageants and the military,” while making “friends that will last a lifetime.”
Marsh, who was crowned Miss Colorado in 2023, is an Arkansas native and holds a degree in physics from the Air Force Academy. She is studying public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, according to her competition profile.
After the death of her mother in 2018, Marsh helped set up a charitable foundation to fund research into pancreatic cancer and help care for patients. To date, more than a quarter-million dollars has been raised, according to the Miss Colorado website.
It’s a remarkable story in so many ways. Balancing the competing demands of these pageants and the life of a USAFA cadet must have been extraordinarily challenging. And she obviously excelled, not only winning the Miss Academy, Miss Colorado, and Miss America pageants but graduating high enough academically to be selected for pilot training and to gain admission to HKS. And all the while she’s been running a nonprofit?
Presumably, the Air Force is giving her some unusual accommodations to allow her to pursue her master’s degree before going to flight school. And she’ll have some significant obligations as Miss America. But we’ve allowed academy graduates to defer service to play professional sports, for example, so it’s possible. She’s a great recruiting poster for the Academy and the service.
I can see the recruiting posters already and the music is playing in my head..
Come fly with me…..
I must really be out of it. I thought these contests were held in September.
@CSK:
The 2023 Miss America was crowned on December 16, 2022.
This is the first reference to beauty pageants that I’ve read in ages that wasn’t centered on trump caddishness or trans contestant.
@Bill Jempty:
Shows you how much attention I pay to it.
I’m astounded beauty contests still exist in the US. And please, don’t tell me about how they’ve change since the bad old days and they are not focused on physical appearance. Have you ever seen a plain looking contestant?
@MarkedMan:
Actually I think we’ve seen a pretty wide pendulum swing, from a singular focus on the physical attractiveness of women, to an equal focus on male physical attractiveness. See: every lead actor on every Marvel or DC movie. It’s hard nowadays to be a movie star without six pack abs. Even tiny, little Jeremy Allen White is paraded around in his undies. For every Charlize Theron there’s a Chris Hemsworth. Compare a shirtless John Wayne to Chris Evans or Jason Momoa or Michael B. Jordan. You can barely (heh) get through a movie without seeing some guy’s ass.
Full disclosure: I live not too distant from the Air Force Academy, and our family sponsors about two dozen cadets, who can treat our house as a home-away-from-home when they have a pass to leave. I never met Marsh, but I do have some understanding of the rigors of the Academy.
I’ve never been a fan of these pageants, but 2dLt Marsh deserves a lot of credit for balancing all the competing requirements for USAFA and this competition.
That’s not that unusual. While it’s rarer for pilots to go straight to grad school, cadets who are likely future high-performing officers and can get into a top-tier school like Harvard are encouraged to do that. It benefits the service by keeping the best personnel. A school tour will add a service commitment, so combined with the pilot commitment, she could be obligated to the Air Force for up to 15 years.
@Michael Reynolds: All my life I’ve heard women actors justifiably complain about the extremes they have to go through in order to meet a physical ideal on camera. Lately, I’ve been hearing men complain about similar things. Kumail Nanjani was talking about how his training and shooting schedule were coordinated, with all the “shirt off” shooting taking place at the same time, with a months long regimen leading up to it. Part of it is just endurance, as between each take he has to drop and do fast pushups just before the cameras start rolling, then pop up in character and not out of breath.
I think “Miss America” would be a cool call sign for a pilot. With “Miss Congeniality” as the wingman, of course.
Great story. Good for her.
She seems like a very high-caliber contestant. Congrats to her and the AFA for any accommodations made.
@MarkedMan: All of those women look identical. It’s disturbing. I’m exaggerating slightly, there are a few darker ones, but they also look identical to each other, and are just a slight variation on the others.
@Michael Reynolds:
There’s a lot more focus on a certain look. Movies from a generation ago have a lot more varied face shapes.
I honestly have a hard time watching some recent movies and shows, since everyone looks the same and I’m a little face blind. It’s a very practical reason that I like random diversity, since I can usually tell which one is the Black guy and which one is Latino.
Ok, but superheroes have a defined body shape.
He’s little?
I do like that he has a different face. He looks like a holdover from the 60s or 70s.
Timothy Chalamet is little. (And even he looks like a weirdly muscular stick insect these days, and now I have “Timothy Chalamet shirtless” in my search history)
So I’m guessing these beauty pageants aren’t considered “woke?”
@Gustopher:
Number 12 Looks Just Like You.
@Gustopher:
He claims 5’7″. So actually, 5’5″.