For Betty Cantrell, Being Miss America is Her First Full-Time Job

Betty Cantrell, Miss America 2015. (Photo: Getty)

When 21-year-old Betty Cantrell from Georgia was crowned Miss America on Sunday night with high marks from judges like Zendaya and former Miss America Vanessa Williams, she took a selfie with her beaming fellow contestants. “So HONORED to be your #MissAmerica 2016!” she tweeted. “A night I will never forget!” The Mercer University undergraduate and vocal performance major sang “Tu Tu Piccolo Iddio” from the opera “Madame Butterfly” and answered a question about whether Tom Brady cheated or not. “It was kind of a funky question to ask me if Tom Brady cheated,” she later told the Associated Press. “I’m not a football player and I really wasn’t there to feel that ball.” While she was speaking with Yahoo Beauty on Monday afternoon, she was running on only 45 minutes of sleep after her whirlwind win. “Luckily, I have a great makeup artist,” she tells Yahoo Beauty.

Her platform, “Healthy Children, Strong America,” isn’t just about physical wellness — it’s about emotional and mental wellness, too. “My family was the von Trapp family in Church,” says Cantrell. “We sang music. To me, we were the perfect family. My parents owned a physical therapy business together. My brother and I did everything together. When my parents divorced last year, it broke me down. I stopped believing in love and marriage — and it made me stress eat and it ruined my body.” This was in the midst of competing for Miss Georgia — and her sophomore year of college. “I want to communicate that it’s not your fault if bad things happen to you,” she says.

Miss America CEO Sam Haskell, Betty Cantrell, and Vanessa Williams. (Photo: Getty)

Even though she won the crown, Cantrell actually tripped twice onstage in her evening gown. “I’m pretty sure the judges saw that. The biggest tip to being confident is to accept that you won’t be perfect,” she says. “The reality is that everyone messes up.” As a trained singer, Cantrell was always onstage — long before she started competing in beauty pageants. Like Tony, Grammy, and Emmy-nominated Williams, who was crowned Miss America in 1984 and dethroned 10 months afterwards for nude photographs that were taken before she won, Cantrell hopes to continue performing long after her reign is over. This year, Williams finally received an apology from the Miss America Organization. “I want to apologize for anything that was said or done that made you feel any less than the Miss America you are and the Miss America you always will be,” CEO Sam Haskell told Williams onstage. “You just have to recover. You have to,” says Cantrell. “Show people what you’ve got.”

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