14 DAY TRIAL // Kayla Martell is stunning: with her perfect body, her pearly wide smile and what looks like a full set of blonde hair, she’s definitely beauty pageant material. As it happens, Kayla is bald – and she may just compete in Miss America without a wig.
Speaking with ABC just recently, Kayla underlined the desire to prove that beauty is more than just the attributes at first glance she seems to have, the blonde hair included.
She’s dreamed of becoming Miss America since she was 3, she says for the media outlet for the Conversations segment, and, at 10, when she started losing her hair, she decided she would not let that stand in her way.
Kayla, Miss Delaware, has a condition called alopecia areata, which, as she explains in the video below, means more or less that her body is “allergic” to hair.
To compete in beauty pageants, she shaves it all off and then puts on a wig. In real life, though, she hardly wears one because she’s not afraid to believe that she’s just as gorgeous without hair as she is with it.
For Miss America, she’s already packed several suitcases of outfits and 4 wigs – but she still has plenty of time to decide against wearing one for the pageant.
She says she wouldn’t want other girls with the same condition to believe they have to cover their baldness to be considered beautiful – and the pageant has already told her it’s ok if she doesn’t want to have a wig on.
“Miss America, she needs to be relatable to all people, but she also must be approachable,” the beauty queen tells ABC.
Of her wearing a wig for pageants, she says she does it because doesn’t want to give people a chance of labeling her one way or another before they actually know her.
“Oftentimes when people see me, at first glance, they assume that I’m either very, very sick or that I’m going through chemotherapy,” she explains.
“The wig gives me an opportunity to meet them and have that initial moment where they’re not worried about me... Then I get to bring up my alopecia areata on my own terms,” she adds.
To see Kayla Martell speaking of how she plans to have the concept of beauty re- (or better) defined by running for Miss America, check out the video below.
