Hagan (left) and Miss Brooklyn Outstanding Teen, Joelle Bracco
Miss Brooklyn 2010 or Miss Recent New York City Transplant? On Sunday, this year’s Miss Brooklyn crown went to Mallory Hagan, a 21-year-old gal living in Bed-Stuy who dazzled, tap-danced and took the pageant title like a pro, which, it seems she is. In Alabama. Before Sunday, Hagan was known most recently as Miss Chattahoochee Valley 2008 (Alabama). Before that, as Miss Smiths Station Outstanding Teen 2006 (also Alabama). Clearly, Hagan knows how to win pageants, and she’s got talent, for sure. So that covers the “Miss,” but Brooklyn? The competition doesn’t even require its contestants to live here.
The official rules say: “Contestants… who live, attend school or work in the Five Boroughs of New York are eligible to compete.” As for proving their BK-cred at the competition, contestants are asked only things like their favorite stuff to do, their favorite park, who the borough president is.
While Hagan at least lives in the right borough, unlike the 2008 winner, she’s only been here since Oct. 2008, raising questions of beauty-pageant carpetbagging.
Pageant officials said that they had a bunch of new entries this year owing to our advance coverage, so maybe we’re a little disappointed that the winner wasn’t a groovy graphic designer wearing a 1940s dress from Beacon’s Closet, or even some opera singer from Bensonhurst. But does anyone else think it’s a little off that our new Miss Brooklyn was wearing a Miss Chattahoochee Valley sash just two years ago? Or are we being too provincial?
