The Miss America organization has lost its way, according to a beauty pageant winner who says she lost her crown because she would not agree that men can become women.
Kayleigh Bush was crowned as Miss North Florida in September 2024, but that did not last for long.
She said the Miss America organization required her to sign a contract that conflicted with her beliefs, according to TMZ.
Beauty pageant winner Kayleigh Bush used to admire Miss America, but now she's ripping the organization for being unable to define what a woman is. 😳 https://t.co/N055S6cwh7 pic.twitter.com/f0bOWN6SX2
— TMZ (@TMZ) February 11, 2026
According to Miss America’s rules, a “female” includes “a born female or an individual who has fully completed Sex Reassignment Surgery,” according to Newsweek.
Bush said she refused to agree to that.
“I was unwilling to agree that little boys can become girls and I took a stand against the Miss America organization and lost my crown as a result of that,” she said.
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A pageant representative said that’s not quite accurate, saying Bush “retained her crown” but “simply did not go forward because she refuse to sign the contract every other contestant signed.”
But Bush said the pageant tried to change the rules on her.
ENOUGH: It’s time to end the charade.
— Drea Humphrey (@DreaHumphrey) February 12, 2026
You cannot become the opposite sex.⁰Saying that isn’t hateful; it’s the truth.
If you know this but wouldn’t dare say it out loud, you allow the narrative that it is hate to stick.
Make truth great again.⁰The truth will set us free. https://t.co/jCp5fxlnjM
“I was asked to sign a contract that was different than the first one that I had agreed to, because they had changed it four weeks after I rightly won,” she said. “And so I didn’t lose my crown because I broke a rule, I lost the crown because I was unwilling to rewrite the truth.”
She said that she and her mother tried to deal with the organization.
“We got on a conference call immediately with one of the directors for the Miss America organization,” she said.
“And weeks and weeks and weeks of pleading with them, sending videos, sending letters, emails, demand letters through Liberty Counsel because they picked up my case and they just said ‘no, no, no,’ and they doubled down,” she described.
“It was disappointing because Miss America has been honoring women for over 100 years and now they can’t even define what a woman is,” she added.
“I used to look up to Miss America because they empowered women, but now it’s really disappointing to see that they’ve abandoned such a common-sense truth — that a man is a man and that a woman is a woman,” Bush said, according to LifeSite News.
She said that she was “disappointed in the Miss America organization but I’m really hoping that they get back on track and return to truth and you know start honoring God in their pageants like they used to.”
This article originally appeared on The Western Journal and is reposted with permission.
