The story of how Carolyn Sapp, Miss America 1992, became an accidental domestic violence crusader marks the moment that a new era for Miss America came into focus. The pageant had barreled out of the messy 1980s with still-formidable television ratings, a bulwark of corporate sponsorships, its identity in the public imagination secure, but also aspirations for a new relevance. Just in time for the advocacy-minded Miss Americas of Generation X.
More than 20 years after feminists protested on the Boardwalk, the first generation to enjoy all the fruits of the women’s movement was coming of age, and some of its members, as it turned out, were still interested in pageants. They would seize their crowns with more self-direction than the women who preceded them. And eventually, they would become the first group of Miss Americas to question why the pageant wasn’t controlled by Miss Americas—and set out to do something about it.
Miss America 1992, Carolyn Sapp of Hawaii, is crowned by former Miss America Marjorie Judith Vincent on Sept. 14, 1991. Charles Rex Arbogast—AP
It was 4 a.m., and Carolyn Sapp had barely taken the new crown off her head to catch a few hours of sleep when the phone rang in her Atlantic City hotel room. It was a reporter, from her home state of Hawaii. But instead of late-night congratulations, he was asking the new Miss America about Nu’u Fa’aola—her ex-fiancé, a former New York Jets running back and, until that night, the better-known half of their relationship.
“We know you had him [reported] for domestic violence,” the reporter said. “Tell us about it.”
Miss America had never dealt with a Miss America quite like Carolyn Sapp before. She looked like an old-school beauty queen from the 1940s, an hourglass knockout with the big shoulders and the big face and big hair, her natural strawberry blonde dyed a rich mahogany to set off her pale skin and dark red lips. (It was the ’90s.) But her energy was a very new thing. She had a swingy kind of walk and eyes that would pin you to the wall while her mouth stayed in constant motion, laughing, talking, smiling.
The night she was crowned, when they told her they needed a family picture, but just with your mom and dad, okay? Sapp pushed back, not for the last time, and got both her stepparents and her three half-siblings and a grandmother and a couple aunts and a cousin in the photo, too. The next morning, as she posed for photos in the surf, she let the Old English sheepdog who came bounding into the frame lick the makeup off her face, and the photographers nearly died of joy.
