Cheslie Kryst’s Death Should Be a Wakeup Call For Pageantry’s Toxic Fandom
I was mindlessly tapping through Instagram stories when I saw a post from one of my pageant friends that made my heart sink. Thinking it must be some sort of mistake, I opened a tab to Google, typed in “Cheslie Kryst,” and lost my breath. “Former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst Dies From Apparent Suicide,” one of the headlines read.
I did not know Cheslie and I never had the opportunity to meet her, but she impacted me in ways she will never get to know. I previously wrote about Cheslie in 2019 when she won the crown of Miss USA while wearing her beautiful, big, curly hair. As a Black woman who competed in pageants for more than 10 years and who never had the courage to wear my hair anyway other than straight, Cheslie’s victory meant so much to me, and I can image to so many other young women of color who felt their natural hair was not good enough for the pageant stage.
But Cheslie was more than just her hair or her many accomplishments. I’ve read countless tributes to her that recount how warm, caring, and friendly she was, how she always had a smile on her face. She was a woman who spread so much love and light and had so much life ahead of her. This loss is immeasurable.
Cheslie was dealing with high-functioning depression, her mom said, and she hid it from everyone around her. We’ll never know exactly what made Cheslie make the decision she did. But what I do know as a former pageant competitor is that the toxic culture of message boards and Facebook groups where “fans” go to tear contestants apart have had an extremely negative impact on the mental health of so many young women, including myself.
Cheslie talked openly about the trolling she faced as Miss USA; how anonymous commenters said she wasn’t pretty enough to be Miss USA, that her body was too muscular. She even posted a TikTok calling out haters who would tell her to kill herself.
One of the worst offending boards is the Miss USA Bubble Board or USB, which had an accompanying Facebook group before it was quietly taken offline in the days following Cheslie’s death. I can imagine that was done to conceal the hateful insults about young women posted under the guise of critique on a daily basis. According to a recent YouTube video by Miss Montana USA 2018 Dani Walker, sometime last year Cheslie herself responded to a person in the group who had been constantly saying disparaging things about her:
“ … Why don’t you take a break from the Cheslie hate for a while? We get it, you don’t like me and you’ve been spewing vitriol and hate in my general direction from the moment I won. I like seeing the pageant updates in this group, especially when I don’t see them on other social media platforms and I get that not everyone’s opinion of me is always going to be positive, but a simple search in this group of “Cheslie” and [commenter] together shows the amount of negativity you’ve near constantly shared about me, a woman you’ve never had a conversation with or personally met. I implore you to do some soul searching about why that is and hop off the Cheslie hate train for the time being. I’m tired of it and I hope that after two long years you are too.”
Given what has happened, these words are haunting.
I remember going on these boards after the Miss New York USA in 2016. I was on a high after placing third runner up out of close to 200 accomplished and beautiful women. I had competed three times before and never even made the semifinals. I worked so hard for that placement and was so proud of myself. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the comments I saw cut me like a knife. “I don’t know how that Ashley girl made the Top 5,” “This entire Top 5 makes no sense,” “New York will miss the cut at USA again this year.” Those are just a few of the comments I remember. Other ones had racist undertones. None of those people cared how hard I worked or why I was competing. They just thought I was ugly and didn’t deserve what I had earned, and they were going to post about it on the internet.
Those comments stuck with me. I competed the following year but was struggling with depression after losing my aunt to cancer and my heart just wasn’t in it anymore. I didn’t compete again after that.
This type of commentary has become not only commonplace in the pageant industry, it is the dominant way contestants are discussed. It’s seen as normal to say on a public forum that a woman, who could literally not be older than 28, looks “old,” that she needs to “tone up.” My favorite is when a Black woman wins and the boards are flooded with comments like “the pageant isn’t about beauty anymore.”
This needs to end. Online hate and harassment isn’t exclusive to the pageant industry but it seems to be accepted as a hazard of the sport. People say this is what we signed up for when we decided to compete or that this is what pageants are about, critiquing and comparing women based on their physical beauty. That is absolutely not what we signed up for. Everyone competes in pageants for different reasons, like to build their confidence and interview skills or to be able to talk in front of a group without being scared. Others do it for the networking opportunities in the media and modeling industries. None of us signed up to be endlessly ridiculed and mocked on the internet.
Harassing and demeaning women online has been normalized. Instead of the problem being addressed head on, we’re told to “ignore it” or to “not look at it.” This type of behavior is so baked into pageant culture that women who call it out and defend themselves are seen as aggressive or too sensitive or too involved in drama, which is why most say nothing at all and just suffer silently.
In just the past five years, I’ve seen pageantry evolve tremendously to become more inclusive and start to address some of the industry’s more toxic aspects. It’s time for competitors and true fans to demand change; this culture of hostility has been allowed to go unchecked for far too long. We need to finally speak honestly and openly about these forums and groups which are just havens for bullying and racism.
No other young woman who competes should have to deal with the hate Cheslie so gracefully dealt with. And, in her words, it’s time we do some soul searching on how to finally fix it. Rest in peace, Cheslie.
If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741. The world is so much better with you in it.