“You come back here, you take off your heels, and you put on your combat boots,” Denyse Gordon shouted as the contestants fastened the straps of golden stiletto heels, and zipped and unzipped garment bags. “You girls got it? Heels to combat boots, then back onstage, and show some leg.” Gordon smiled and lifted up her skirt, flashing her muscular calves.
Gordon, an Air Force reservist turned pageant director, stood in the middle of a room lit with fluorescent lights at the University of Nevada Concert Hall in Las Vegas, waiting for 25 military veterans to gather around her. It was hours before they would parade onstage in ball gowns, before they would be drilled on military history and participate in a “Push-up Princess” competition while a drill sergeant screamed commands, before they would find out who among them was the next Ms. Veteran America.
This wasn’t just any beauty pageant. Ms. Veteran America, now in its fourth year, was launched as a fundraising event for Final Salute, a nonprofit created to benefit the estimated 4,338 homeless female veterans in the U.S. — the fastest-growing segment of the homeless veteran population according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Judged by an all-female, all-veteran panel, the contest is more sisterhood than sabotage, the contestants striving to prove their resilience, grace, and poise. The winner receives $15,000 to be used on education, student loans, home purchase or repairs, or starting a business. She also becomes the official face of the contest and Final Salute, attending dozens of public speaking events, parades, morning talk shows, and next year's pageant.
Onstage, the women milled into a circle around Gordon. One contestant, Heather Worley, 30, a short, towheaded Army sergeant with youthful cheeks and a snub nose, leaned against a wall among discarded high heels. To her left stood Szu-Moy Toves, 40, a 20-year Air Force veteran and former bodybuilder with long black hair and a striking white smile. Kerri Turner, 32, an active-duty platoon trainer for the Washington National Guard and regimental operations officer, sat in front of the group, nervously clutching a large water bottle, her round eyes thick with mascara and fixed on Gordon. They all wore pageant sashes bearing “MVA 2015” over white T-shirts reading “Served Like A Girl.”
"The crown is not what it’s about."
“We so appreciate you girls’ hard work, dedication, and sisterhood over the past two days — over the past few months,” said Gordon, who won the title in 2012. “But you girls know, the crown is not what it’s about. The talent is not what it’s about—” her voice cracked. She paused, putting her hands on her hips and letting out a sharp sigh.
“Oh god, don’t start,” Toves said. The veterans began sniffling, pulling out tissues, and fanning their eyes to keep makeup from running. “I think we all just got a little bit of dust in our eyes,” another laughed.
Many of the women — contestants and judges alike — cried during the competition. Sometimes a song or monologue during the talent competition got to them. Other times their tears were aided by alcohol and the joy of being surrounded by fellow military women — a rare occurrence even before they'd left the armed services. Toward the end, some cried when they lost, and others, when they won.
“Military girls don’t get emotional,” Capt. Jaspen Boothe, a 15-year war veteran and founder of the Ms. Veteran America competition, told BuzzFeed News. “That’s what we were always told. So it can’t be tears. It has to be dust.”
From left: Andrea Waterbury, Szu-Moy Toves, and Heather Worley at the Ms. Veteran America semifinals on Oct. 17, 2015.
Cheryl A. Guerrero for Buzzfeed News
The fourth annual Ms. Veteran America competition took place over two days in and around Las Vegas. Sunset Station, the hotel-casino where the contestants stayed and the semifinals were held, smelled like decades of cigarette smoke and spilled cocktails treated with industrial-strength cleaner. Like in many other casinos in the area, the ceiling was made to look like a bright sky — but here the paint was peeling.
Sunset Station in Henderson, Nevada.
Cheryl A. Guerrero for Buzzfeed
Though the semifinals and finals were held in October, the journey to Ms. Veteran America actually began months earlier. Over 150 women of different ages, races, upbringings, and military branches entered regional competitions over the summer, which took place in Virginia, Nevada, and over Skype. The panel of judges looked for applicants who were the most creative, eloquent, vivacious, and committed to helping their fellow women veterans.
Once chosen, the 25 finalists spent months soliciting donations for the charity, creating social media presences, and trying to get funding for their ball gowns, travel, and other expenses. Most came to Nevada on their own dime — no easy feat on veteran compensation and disability checks. Many had to find child care and take time off work, while others faced emergency surgeries, deaths of family and friends, PTSD flashes, and other catastrophes days before the main event.
“Preparing for this — getting donations, being on social media all the time — has basically been my life for the past few months,” Worley said, helping herself to the backstage snack spread. “My husband would sometimes get frustrated, saying, ‘I wish you had a little more time for me.’” But she needed to do this for herself.
At 8 a.m. the day of the semifinals, the 25 contestants — made up and stilettoed, large biceps bulging from cocktail dresses — squeezed into a waiting area for registration, meeting and greeting, then mostly waiting. They knew only 10 of them would move on to the next day’s finals, where they would compete in front of a live audience at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. They pored over binders, tapped their fingers, chatted in hushed tones, and checked their makeup using selfie mode on their phones. One woman fixed and refixed the harness of her service dog, a golden retriever named Grace.
They were waiting to be called one by one into the conference room to sit alone in front of a panel of five judges led by Command Sgt. Maj. Michele Jones, the first woman to reach that rank. There the judges asked each veteran about military history and current events, soliciting fact-based answers or personal opinions. The questions were “top secret” — a classification the women took very seriously — and reminded the contestants of the many nerve-racking, challenging tests they had to take as military trainees. An hour in, multiple women had emerged from the interview room sobbing.
“Right now is worst part of the whole competition,” Worley said between offering fellow contestants doughnuts. The sergeant is originally from Ohio but has spent the last seven years in Alabama, where she adopted a slight Southern twang. “It’s just that it’s all unknown that makes it so nerve-racking.”
“And also the sergeant major,” she said. “Talk about intimidating!”
“When a male veteran is homeless, his country failed him. When a female veteran is homeless, she failed her country.”
While the contestants waited, they swapped stories of first hearing about the competition — and reacting with disgust. “Great, just what girls want to be celebrated for after years of unrecognized military service — their appearance,” one contestant recalled. Another said she pictured women holding M16 rifles and parading around in bikinis and heels, waving at an audience of civilians. But as they learned more about the competition, they came to realize it was about charity, not bathing suits. More specifically, a charity for them.
Worley herself was homeless for much of her childhood. For years she lived in tents, motel rooms, or tiny apartments with her five-person family, working in fast-food restaurants with her mother long before she was the legal working age. At 17 she joined the military “without much thought,” she said. She was shipped off to South Korea.
Several other contestants became homeless after leaving the military, finding that the skills they'd honed since they were 18 were not applicable in the outside world. As they struggled, they felt overlooked by the VA and civilians alike.
“When a male veteran is homeless, his country failed him,” founder Boothe said. “When a female veteran is homeless, she failed her country.”
Contestants arrive at the Ms. Veteran America finals at UNLV.
Cheryl A. Guerrero for BuzzFeed News
After the interviews and lunch at the casino’s buffet, the contestants returned to the waiting room for the next part of semifinals: the talent contest. In Ms. Veteran America, there are two distinct talent rounds. On the first day, the top 25 perform in front of the judges in a stuffy, windowless room at Sunset Station. Based on their performances — or, as Boothe put it, based on how hard it seems like they tried — and their scores from the interview section, the top 10 contestants move on to the next day’s finals, where they reperform their talent in front of a live audience.
The women got creative with their talents. One dressed convincingly as a World War II–era housewife — blue polka-dot dress, long red hair done up in a 1940s swirl — and hosted a faux cooking-show segment on baking cinnamon bread. Others screened documentaries shot on their iPhones about their lives, or showed off their sword-swinging abilities. One woman’s talent was particularly straightforward: correctly pronouncing her own name.
Szu-Moy Toves
Cheryl A. Guerrero for BuzzFeed News
Toves wore a feathered tutu, bra, and headdress and performed a “traditional Tahitian dance that my military sisters taught me,” she said. As the self-described “motorcycle nut” shook her hips, the straw and feathers rattled, shivering like a peacock’s tail. She yelped enthusiastically and smiled at the judges like a practiced contestant.
Others were not as confident. Some trembled with nerves; others kept apologizing and asked to start over multiple times. “It’s OK, take your time,” said Jones. She wore a tailored, creaseless, military-inspired pantsuit with stiletto platform boots in matching army-green suede. She radiated such an air of authority that when she cracked a smile or laughed her loud, warm, laugh, those around her looked startled.
The judges cheered along, joked with the contestants, encouraged the ones who messed up, and, often, cried. For her talent, one woman told the story of having to deploy shortly after giving birth and return to a daughter who didn’t recognize her. “I watched my baby girl grow up through photos,” she said. When she returned from deployment, she said, “Here was this chubby baby, and it was so wonderful to hold her. But she didn’t know me.” Many judges wiped tears from their eyes and said they related.
Toves joined the military at 18 and gave birth to her son at 20, during her first active-duty station in the U.K. “I was too young,” she said. “I named him Chance because he happened by chance.” She went to work when he was 6 weeks old. The military base had a daycare, but her shifts were usually at night, so she had to find babysitters to watch her “little peanut.” “It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” she said. Chance took his first steps and said his first words with people she barely knew.
Turner, like Toves, was calm and assured during the talent portion. A petite woman with giant eyes, a Cheshire cat smile, and sleeves of tattoos, she was dressed in a white shirt, leggings, combat boots, and a puffy, wraparound skirt. The only returning contestant, she'd placed third last year. This time, with more free time to prepare after losing her full-time job days before the competition, she hoped to make it all the way.
Her talent was a monologue she wrote that followed four different women in four different wars, from Revolutionary to Iraq. “I come along my husband who was lyin’ on the floor bleedin’,” she said in an imitation old-timey American accent. “He told me he loved me, but to keep fightin’. So I heaved to cannon in the barrel, and I lit it.” As she switched eras, the skirt transformed into a 1950s apron, then a hippie poncho, and as she got to present day, a hijab.
Turner was a teen mom and the daughter of a teen mom. She had her first son at 16, her second at 19, and her daughter at 21. At the age of 22, Turner enlisted. She was seeking stability, financial independence, and a college education, she said. “And I got it: The military is the longest relationship I’ve ever had.”
She was deployed to Kuwait in 2012. “We were in the middle of the desert; everywhere you looked it was brown,” she said. “You wake up, go to the gym, look at the same colors and shapes every day, and go to bed. A groundhog day.” She organized a Christmas brunch and a Halloween zombie run to change things up. “I dressed up as a pregnant zombie with a baby zombie coming out of my belly,” she laughed. “It was awesome.”
But as the only female officer on special staff, it was lonely. “There’s only so many cock and balls jokes you can take,” she said. At one point she tried to give the men a taste of their own medicine by reading 50 Shades of Grey aloud in the office, but ended up spending most of her time in her shipping container turned bedroom by herself.
“The Army, ha! It’s a cross between high school and prison itself,” Turner said during her monologue, quoting from Sand Queen, one of her favorite books. She was in character as a woman deployed to Iraq. “‘Females aren’t allowed in combat! This is a man’s war!’ Seriously? ‘Cause here I am.” The judges applauded enthusiastically as she bowed.
Kerri Turner performing her monologue at Sunset Station.
Cheryl A. Guerrero for BuzzFeed News
The performances were followed by a dinner at the casino’s buffet. The women sat at a long table, eating sushi and lasagna of the same temperature and drinking cheap red wine they paid for themselves. Boothe handed out triangular glass trophies engraved “MVA 2015, The Woman Behind The Uniform” in categories like “Social Butterfly” — for the woman who was most successful promoting the contest and charity on social media — and “Hot Mama” — which “honors the woman who serves and sacrifices for not only her country, but her family as well.”
There were many tipsy tears, speeches, hugs, and raisings of glasses that continued into the casino bar next door. They talked about their experiences in the armed services: being mothers-at-arms, meeting their husbands on deployment, experiencing sexual trauma. What a relief it was to be around military women and let their “girl flags fly,” as Toves said.
“As a woman, you are constantly proving yourself to everyone around you every single day in a way that men just aren’t,” Turner said. She felt that if she presented herself as overly feminine she would be regarded as a “pretty girl” — a label, she said, one does not want to be given in the military.
“As a woman, you are constantly proving yourself in a way that men just aren’t."
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