At just 20 years old, Grace Richardson shook up the rules of the beauty pageant and moved the audience by sharing her story.
This year, Miss England looked less like a beauty pageant than an episode of Glee: Grace Richardson, a musical theatre student, clinched the title and disrupted the standards by becoming the first openly lesbian winner. On November 21, at the Grand Station venue in Wolverhampton, transformed for the occasion into an arena of glamour, the 20-year-old was crowned, leaving nothing of her story untold, laid bare under the spotlight. Bullying at school, taunts, confusion, and pressure to conform… Grace Richardson chose transparency. “My sexuality has no bearing on my role as Miss England,
she admits,
but expressing myself as a lesbian woman contributes to normalization
“, she told CNN.
The contest, long ritualized around fixed aesthetic canons and traditional values, changed its face when the jury asked the future Miss about the difficulties she had overcome. She notably spoke about her coming out, the discomfort of returning to class after the lockdown while owning her truth and the isolation she felt. “That represents a large part of my past and, at that moment, I wanted to share with him my evolution as a person. These are the stories that make each of us unique, so I don’t see the point in hiding them
“, she told CNN reporters. By her gesture, she hopes “to inspire more women”, to offer the visibility she has never had, to show that one can be lesbian while pursuing the dreams one had long believed unattainable.
A coming out without pretense
This crown is part of a story of progressive emancipation in the world of beauty pageants. Before her, several queer women had already shaken the codes, such as Swe Zin Htet, the first openly lesbian contestant to compete at Miss Universe 2019. In October 2022, Mariana Varela and Fabiola Valentín, Miss Argentina and Miss Puerto Rico 2020, even got married. However, until now, they had never publicly formalized their relationship. The difference, then, is that Grace Richardson does not make a big deal out of her homosexuality but makes a public, immediate, and assumed declaration, and this in the middle of the competition. Her coming out is not a marketing gimmick but a message: win for who you are, not for what society would want you to be. One must believe that visibility is not incompatible with the crown, nor with evening gowns and sequins.
