This Miss USA contestant overcame losing her hearing to compete for the crown
During Sunday night's Miss USA competition, one contestant is challenging the stereotype that the biggest challenge pageant contestants face is choosing a swimsuit or walking in heels.
Just before her fourth birthday, Miss Pennsylvania’s Elena LaQuatra was a precocious young girl who spent her free time performing in singing and dancing troupes. Then, bacterial meningitis struck, claiming her hearing in both ears and affecting her major organs, leaving doctors unsure about whether she'd be able to walk unassisted again.
Given the choice between teaching their daughter sign language and taking a chance on the then-fledgling Cochlear implant technology, LaQuatra's parents opted for the implant. And fast forward to 2016, and LaQuatra, a born-and-raised Pittsburgh native, is representing her state at Sunday night's pageant.
"Based on my personality, my involvement in all these dance and performance groups, my parents knew that I would want to be in a hearing world," LaQuatra told USA TODAY.
"So they went with the implant, and I had to go through a lot of physical therapy and speech therapy, but after all that, my parents never let me use my disability as a crutch. So I never viewed it that way, or let it define me"
LaQuatra was first inspired to compete in pageants by another inspirational figure who experienced hearing loss. "There was a deaf Miss America in 1995, her name was Heather Whitestone, and I met her at an event for Cochlear America when i was 10 or 11. She was the driving force that encouraged me to enter pageants."
With her own successes, LaQuatra hopes to provide the same inspiration to her supporters. "Winning Miss Pennsylvania. I have had so many people reach out to me -- young girls, mothers, just saying that I’ve encouraged them or inspired them to pursue their dreams. And girls have reached out to me saying that they’d love to do it but they don’t think they’re pretty enough, tall enough, skinny enough, smart enough."
Her message? "I tell them, ‘You don’t have to be perfect.’ Nobody at this pageant is perfect, We all have flaws, and we embrace that. And to tell them that, and give them a little bit of encouragement, means the world to me."
Along the way, LaQuatra has challenged stereotypes of pageant contestants as, in her words, "plastic Barbie dolls," and she credits Miss USA and the Miss Universe organization for putting women with real, relatable stories on stage. "People just assume that all we do is look pretty - we do our our makeup, our hair, worry about what we wear and walking on stage."
"The group of girls we have as Miss USA’s Class of 2016 are phenomenal -- Miss District of Columbia is in the Army, Miss Michigan is a nurse for spinal surgery, I have my hearing impairment -- we're so diverse and we’re all involved in so many things outside of pageantry, and those things are what makes us good pageant contestants. And we can relate to the average girl."
The pageant paradigm is shifting, thanks to new efforts by the organizations to showcase a wider range of life experiences. "We’ve done [Miss USA] photoshoots without makeup, just to show that we don’t look like we look onstage. From what I’ve seen in past years when it’s been all about the glam and the makeup and the modeling, this year is much more girl-next-door. We’re real, we like to have fun, we’re silly.
"I do feel like it’s getting a really positive response, based on comments I’ve seen on social media, like ‘I really like that they’re showing the girls as what they are.'"
Cheer on LaQuatra and the rest of the Miss USA contestants Sunday night on Fox at 7:00 p.m. ET.