After a 16-year absence from the beauty pageant circuit, Miss Brooklyn returned this year -- which meant that maybe, just maybe, a Brooklynite would become Miss New York, or even Miss America.
Of all the 17 to 24 year olds in Brooklyn, last week's pageant was only seven-strong, and the winner is causing a commotion in the borough. The Brooklyn Paper is reporting on the scandalous move of crowning a "queen who's not from Kings." After her win, 22-year-old Leigh-Taylor Smith sashayed her Miss Brooklyn sash right back to Manhattan, where she resides. The paper says the beauty's "main qualification for being Miss Brooklyn is that she is a parishioner at the Brooklyn Tabernacle on the Fulton Mall in Downtown."
Hold on to your tiaras, it gets better: Smith is barely even a New Yorker, having only moved here last year after graduating from the University of Virginia.
Pageant organizers said there simply wasn't enough interest from girls in Brooklyn to join the pageant, which is likely why it disappeared for so many years. Perhaps Brooklyn girls are too smart to want to take part in the antiquated "scholarship program".
Photo via Brooklyn Paper
