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Last night was the final night of the Miss America pageant, and like any event in 2017, the evening was full of surprises.
Miss North Dakota, Cara Mund, was crowned our 2018 Miss America, the first time in the show’s history that someone from the Peace Garden State has come out on top. (Bet you didn’t know that North Dakota was the “Peace Garden State,” did ya?) Mund is a 23-year-old student at Brown University, and she plans on attending Notre Dame Law School after taking a year off to serve as Miss America.
As if being a future lawyer isn’t enough, Mund is socially aware and conscious of the many problems facing the U.S. The Miss America champion wowed during the Q&A round, a segment in which contestants have only 20 seconds to answer a multi-faceted opinion question. When asked by Judge Maria Menounos whether the U.S. withdrawing from the Paris agreement on climate change is a good or bad idea, Mund responded with grace:
“I do believe it’s a bad decision. Once we reject that, we take ourselves out of the negotiation table. And that’s something that we really need to keep in mind. There is evidence that climate change is existing, so whether you believe it or not, we need to be at that table. And I think it’s just a bad decision on behalf of the United States.”
Mund received big cheers from the crowd, proving that pageants aren’t just about bikinis and dance numbers.
While the Q&A segment can detrimentally affect a contestant’s chance at winning, this year’s ceremony may have changed all that. Another contestant, Miss Texas Margana Wood, absolutely slayed her answer to what could have been an incredibly polarizing question, and the internet is loving it.
Did Miss Texas answer the question better than our own president? The general internet consensus seems to be yes. Traditionally, getting political could come back to bite you in a pageant, but not this year: Wood was named fourth runner-up, a prize that comes with a $10,000 award.
Woke pageant contestants are just what 2017 needs. Let’s hope next year’s contestants continue the trend.
