The Biggest Beauty Pageant Scandals to Ever Surface

Months after being crowned Miss Hispanic America in 2008, Zuniga and seven others were arrested for racketeering, drug trafficking, weapons charges and money laundering after Mexican police caught the group carrying a small arsenal of weapons and fifty grand in cash. Zuniga insisted to police that she was simply headed to Bolivia and Colombia to go "shopping."

But authorities didn’t buy it, and she was stripped of the title. Zuniga was sentenced to 40 days in jail. 

The ghoulish murder of the 6-year-old child beauty pageant contestant in 1997 was the first time many Americans had heard of the world of dressing up children to look like teenagers. The horrific nature of her murder, along with the botched investigation, bizarre ransom note, and suspicions toward her parents, the strange nature of child pageants themselves – and whether that world had anything to do with the girl’s death.

The case is still open.

The winner of Miss USA 1957 held the crown for exactly one day, losing the title after her mother-in-law revealed that not only was she married with two children, but that she’d lied about her real age. Apparently Gage had met her husband at age 13, married at age 14 and had two kids by age 18 – all major no-nos in beauty pageant land.

The scandal made her a massive media figure for a short time, and she later published a book, attempted suicide, and married six times. She died at the age of 71.

Chaos ensued when host Steve Harvey accidentally crowned the wrong Miss Universe in December 2015. He accidentally read the cue card wrong, and announced that Ariadna Gutierrez Arévalo, aka Miss Colombia, was the winner. After she received the crown, she performed the traditional ritual wave to the crowd. Harvey came back out onstage when she was finished, and delivered the devastating news. Miss Colombia was actually the first runner up; the real first place winner was Pia Alonzo Wurztbach from the Philippines. 

Bert Parks, the longtime emcee of the Miss America pageant, sang the event's signature theme ("There She Is") and ran the show from 1955 until 1979. At that point, pageant organizers dumped the aging Parks, believing he was no longer a suitable public face for an event eager to attract younger viewers. Parks was fired with such little class that he learned of it in a reporter. Subsequently, Johnny Carson organized a letter-writing campaign demanding his reinstatement.

While Parks had a cameo on the show in 1990, he never appeared again and died two years later. 

An early victim of social media, Miss Nevada USA 2007 resigned after compromising photos of her making sexualized poses in a nightclub were posted on MySpace. In 2008, she was arrested after an altercation with a cop, and was suspected of smuggling cocaine into Australia, though she was never charged.