14 DAY TRIAL // Miss Indiana Mekayla Diehl didn’t even make it in the top 10 finalists at the Miss USA 2014 beauty pageant, which took place in Baton Rouge, La., over the weekend, but she might have won something more important than the tiara: the appreciation of the public.
This 25-year-old beauty queen is not like most beauty queens, as you probably heard: during the swimsuit part of the competition, when she strutted on stage in a white 2-piece, the same model all the other girls were also wearing, she caused a stir by the simple fact of not being stick thin or overly muscular.
It’s not that she’s “fat” or overweight, far from it: Mekayla has exactly the kind of figure you would see on an “average” woman, assuming the woman in question works out regularly but also eats right. However, she’s not starving herself and, we assume, she doesn’t spend hours on end at the gym every single day.
In an appearance on Fox News’ Fox & Friends, which is available at the link, the stunning beauty queen admits that she’s a bit overwhelmed by the reactions her swimsuit figure prompted online but, at the same time, thrilled that she’s being considered a role model.
“It's quite overwhelming, in a positive way,” she says. “I wanted to just continue a healthy lifestyle and inspire others to go after their dreams. I never imagined that it would be in a swimsuit.”
Speaking of the swimsuit that started all this Internet madness, Mekayla admits that it didn’t quite fit her, which is a shame because it means organizers only considered certain, much smaller body shapes when they prepared for the pageant.
“I trained very hard for the body I have, but I didn't go to extremes, and I'm proud of that,” Miss Indiana says. On her Facebook before the big night, she revealed she’d been doing a lot of Pilates to get in shape for this round of the competition, even joking that, while she couldn’t say she loved the reformer, her body seemed to love it a lot.
As we speak, disappointment that Mekayla didn’t even make it into the top 10 is still high. Some commenters on social media are even saying that she was probably disqualified because she had such a “normal” figure, which we can’t but hope is not true.
In an industry, because that’s what beauty pageantry is, where all beauties are ranked according to a very strict set of rules, which also includes the mention that they be this tall and that skinny, it’s refreshing to see a woman as gorgeous and normal-looking as Mekayla. Even if she didn’t make it into the finals.