NEW YORK — A New York woman is challenging a long-standing rule that disqualifies mothers from the Miss America and Miss World beauty pageants.
Danielle Hazell said Monday she had always dreamed of competing in the pageant but was shocked to learn she was no longer eligible because, at age 19, she gave birth to her son.
“When I told Zion, who is now 6, about these rules, he had an immediate, instinctive reaction: He said these rules were ridiculous,” she said at the Women’s Rights Pioneers Memorial in New York’s Central Park. “His sense of fairness, still only 6 years old, is telling him this is unfair and doesn’t make sense.”
Hazel’s attorney, Gloria Allred, said the complaint, filed Monday with the city’s Human Rights Commission, seeks to end the requirement, which she says denies and excludes mothers from “important business and cultural opportunities” simply because they are parents.
“As Danielle’s complaint states, this exclusion is based on outdated stereotypes that a woman cannot be a mother and also be beautiful, poised, passionate, talented and charitable, and is degrading to Danielle,” Allred said.
A spokesman for the Miss America and Miss World pageant organizations did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Monday. A spokesman for the Human Rights Commission said the commission does not comment on ongoing investigations.
Allred said she had successfully challenged a similar rule in a case in which a California mother was denied eligibility to compete in the Miss California pageant, run by the Miss Universe and Miss USA organizations.
Following a discrimination complaint filed by Andrea Quiroga with the California Department of Civil Rights, Miss Universe, through its affiliates, lifted the 70-year-old rule that had been imposed around the world, Allred said.
“Pregnancy and parenthood are not crimes and should not exclude individuals from employment or business opportunities,” Allred said. “An individual’s status as a parent should not be stigmatized, and no one should have to feel embarrassed, humiliated, or disgraced because they have become a parent.”
On Monday, the two women were joined by Veronika Didusenko, who was crowned Miss Ukraine 2018 but was stripped of her title after the Miss World organization learned she had a child.
Didusenko has since founded an organisation campaigning to have her mother’s ban from beauty pageants lifted, and although she lost her case in Ukraine, she said she was seeking relief at the European Court of Human Rights.
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