(Editor’s note: This story is by Tim Camerato, of the Valley News, in which it first appeared March 19, 2016.)
[W]ILDER — Working as a ballet teacher in 2007, Alanna Mayer had no experience as a pageant contestant.
Unlike many of the women who stood with her on stage at the Mrs. America competition, she didn’t grow up in the pageant world and had never competed. Mayer was actually there as part of a bet with a ballet student. If she signed up for Mrs. America, the student was supposed to take part in a similar contest. But when sign-ups came, Mayer found herself the only one to follow through.
To her surprise, Mayer won the Vermont state contest, and went on to win Mrs. Congeniality at the national competition that year.
“That was nine years ago, and I always thought maybe some year I would do it again,” she said.
Mayer, 42, is competing again this year and took home the Mrs. Vermont title for a second time in February, but her life and purpose are very different. She came out in 2008, divorced her husband of 13 years and married her longtime friend, Tracy, in 2010. Now, she’s hoping to bring attention to marriage equality by becoming the first woman in a same-sex marriage to represent a state at the Mrs. America pageant.
“It’s a hard decision to come out,” Mayer said. She worried about hurting her husband and children, and was unsure of how her social circle would react.
“All of those experiences have been good,” however, she said, and attributed the acceptance of her friends and colleagues to living in Vermont.
After coming out, Mayer also began to fight for same-sex marriage, and was in Washington, D.C. when the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, making it legal nationwide.
“Although same-sex marriage is legalized federally, there are still a lot of battles we’re facing,” Mayer said.
She’s watched as states have begun to implement “religious freedom” laws that could allow businesses to refuse service to same-sex couples. And she has become concerned about how few states protect LGBT people in the workplace.
It’s with those battles in mind that she’s decided to compete again, hoping to increase awareness of the trials same-sex couples still face across the country.
“If one little girl can look at me and say, ‘I can love who I love and still be pretty,’ that’s powerful,” Mayer said.
Mayer took home the Vermont title competing against one other woman during a competition in Newton, Massachusetts, and is looking forward to competing at the national Mrs. America pageant in August. As its name indicates, the Mrs. America pageant is open only to married women and is held in Las Vegas. Contestants interview with judges and are also expected to model business wear, a swimsuit and an evening gown.
While many contestants prepare their runway walks and interviews months ahead, Mayer said that’s not her style.
“I just don’t believe in that,” she said. “I’m just going to go in and be myself.”
The contestants’ spouses are expected to accompany them to the national event and introduce themselves on stage before the audience. Marjorie Gilbert, the competition’s Vermont and Massachusetts organizer, said there’s never been a same-sex couple on stage together and expects Mayer to be “the talk of the town.”
“It’s going to cause a big to-do when it gets to Las Vegas,” said Gilbert, 91.
“I would never have done it, but that’s me,” Gilbert said. “I am who I am and they are who they are.”
Gilbert supported Mayer’s decision to enter the pageant and said there’s nothing in the rules that would bar her from competing nationally. All a woman needs to bring to register is a driver’s license and copy of her marriage certificate. Since all states provide certificates to same-sex couples under the federal ruling, she said, Mayer qualified.
Paperwork announcing Mayer’s win was also sent down to the national organizers, Gilbert said, and “they didn’t say a word because they know she can do it.”
Diversity isn’t entirely new to the pageant scene, Elwood Watson, a professor of history at East Tennessee State University who studies the Miss America pageant, said in a telephone interview.
The pageant was criticized during the civil rights era for a lack of minority participation, he said, but things began to change when Vanessa Williams won the title in 1984. Since then, eight African-Americans have been crowned Miss America. There’s also been one Asian-American winner and more people of minority descent vie for the tiara, Watson said.
“We’ve moved incrementally in acknowledging race and gender” in America and the pageant often reflects that, Watson said.
Lesbians have also competed on a national level. In 2014, former Miss Kentucky Djuan Trent came out in a post on her personal website.
“Coming out is a very personal process; and I have found that once you decide to come out to the public, it is a never-ending process,” Trent wrote. “I say never-ending because realistically, you will forever be coming out to almost every new person you meet, especially those who ask about your wife, when you actually have a husband or your boyfriend, when you actually have a girlfriend … it never ends.”
The Miss America pageant has been crowning young women since the 1920s, but the first Mrs. America was named in 1977. A Mrs. America of minority descent was crowned in 2012 and the first African-American was crowned in 2014, according to information on its website.
“It was nice to bring my heritage forward and let people recognize a little tiny island in the Caribbean,” April Lufriu, the 2012 Mrs. America and Mrs. World, said in a telephone interview. Her parents immigrated from the Honduran island of Guanaja.
“It was the best experience of my life,” she said of the competition.
Lufriu, a Tampa, Florida, resident, said race was never an issue during the pageant and it came as more of a shock that she could win at the age of 41. She said several woman of Latino descent and African-American women all participated in the competition.
“That goes to show that no one really pinpoints anyone of being a different race or religion,” Lufriu said.
Mayer has lived a more diverse life than most. She was born in Syracuse, New York, to a minister and grew up as a “church brat,” traveling with her father to England and Canada. She moved to the Upper Valley in the late 1990s, where she married and raised two daughters.
Alanna and Tracy met in 2005, first becoming fast friends “and then we were more than friends,” Alanna Mayer said. The two now run a wedding planning business and live together in Wilder with Tracy’s two sons from her first marriage
When Mayer competed in February, she said there was no pushback from anyone, including the Massachusetts contestants and organizers.
“All I’ve gotten is support,” she said.
And when she won, Mayer said it was an incredibly empowering experience.
“All of it feels kind of different,” she said. Now that she’s out, she can be true to herself, which is a much more authentic experience.
