Danielle Hazel, a New Yorker and mother of a 6-year-old, is challenging the exclusion of mothers from the Miss America and Miss World pageants. Alongside prominent women’s rights lawyer Gloria Allred, Hazel announced on Monday that she has filed a discrimination complaint against the pageants with the city’s Commission on Human Rights.
“Being pregnant or being a parent is not a crime,” Allred said. The legal argument by the 25-year-old mother from Brooklyn posits that the Miss America pageant restricts contestants to those with “no legal dependents,” while Miss World requires participants to be “unmarried, childless, and not pregnant.”
Stuart Moskovitz, a lawyer for Miss America, stated on Monday that there is “no ban on mothers,” only on those with legal custodianship of their children.
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“The only ban is where it’s necessary to protect the welfare of the child,” Moskovitz said, claiming that Miss America works “365 days a year” and is busier than the president of the United States.
Unlike the U.S. military, which allows single moms to serve and deploy with a “family care plan,” the Miss America pageant does not accommodate mothers, even if they have willing and able caretakers for their children.
“If you have a legal dependent, you have to take care of the legal dependent,” Moskovitz said. “Any woman that puts competing in this contest above the welfare of her child, well, she’s not a Miss America anyway.”
Attorney Moskovitz stated that allowing mothers with shared custody to compete in the Miss America pageant would jeopardize the child’s well-being.
Hazel, whose lifelong dream was to compete in a major pageant, was devastated to learn that having her son disqualified her. Her young son, Zion, echoed her sentiment, calling the rules “stupid.”
“I do not want myself and other women to be held back by these discriminatory entry rules,” Hazel said. “I also want to show everyone that mothers can also be philanthropists, advocates, and beauty queens.”
Allred added, “We are seeking an end to the discriminatory requirement of both pageants which we believe denies and excludes Danielle and other mothers from an important business and cultural opportunity simply because of their status as parents.”
Hazel announced her discrimination complaint against the Miss America and Miss World pageants at the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in Central Park. Joining her was Veronika Didusenko, who was stripped of her Miss Ukraine 2018 title when Miss World officials learned she had a child.
“One of the judges at the Miss Ukraine pageant pointed at me live on air and said, ‘She had a child at the age of 19 and then divorced. I think it’s wrong to make such person a role model,’ ” Didusenko recounted Monday.
Didusenko is now advocating for mothers in the beauty pageant world. Allred, who previously secured a victory for a California mother, Andrea Quiroga, by challenging a similar rule, helped eliminate the Miss California pageant’s 70-year ban on mothers through a settlement.
In their new lawsuit, Allred and Hazel are targeting the Miss America and Miss World pageants, aiming to prevent future discrimination against mothers and hoping for a resolution similar to their previous success.
