There are over 4,000 posts on the Miss USA Instagram page. But once a new queen was named on August 4, nearly all evidence of the two women who recently resigned their crowns vanished.
One of those women is Noelia Voigt, who relinquished her Miss USA 2023 crown in May. She held the position for seven months, but the only post from her reign acknowledges her resignation.
The same is true on the Miss Teen USA page, where any glimpse of UmaSofia Srivastava, who resigned her title two days after Voigt, has also disappeared.
It’s just the latest development in the drama surrounding Miss USA and its CEO, Laylah Rose. Now, it’s causing many to wonder if the pageant hopes to sweep all its scandals under the rug as its leadership stays silent.
Vanishing act
Voigt and Srivastava have said little about their resignations, citing nondisclosure agreements that forbid them from speaking out about the organization.
Still, their mothers, Jackeline Voigt and Barbara Srivastava, previously spoke to Business Insider about what they had witnessed their daughters go through under Rose’s leadership.
“Our daughters were happy and excited to have the job of their lives when they won those crowns,” Barbara Srivastava told BI in May. “And to expect this is the payment on their self-esteem and their confidence, being bullied by a 46-year-old woman who just wants to be in the limelight herself — this is unacceptable.”
“Noelia was shaking just to see a text or a call or an email from Laylah,” Jackeline Voigt said during the same interview. “Because it was so abusive, so aggressive, the communication.”
In an open letter shared on May 30, Rose said the allegations of a “toxic environment and bullying are not true.”
“To be clear, such behavior is not accepted, and we can assure you that if such behavior ever occurred, we would take immediate steps to protect our titleholder and provide access to appropriate resources,” she added.
As news of the disappearing Instagram posts began to spread on August 9, Jackeline and Barbara sent a statement to BI.
“While both of our daughters have moved on from this, we are disappointed to learn that the Miss USA Organization has chosen to erase their presence in its entirety from official social media,” the statement read.
“This includes all official appearances, their community service with official partners of the Miss Universe Organization and Miss USA, from Smile Train and BestBuddies, as well as all of their personal platforms — which they worked so hard to cultivate, support, and promote — and which were the inspiration for both ladies to compete and reason for their winning the Miss Teen USA and Miss USA 2023 crowns.”
The Miss USA organization didn’t respond to a request for comment.
While Voigt and Srivastava are the first to resign in the pageant’s history, it’s not typical for Miss USA to remove Instagram posts from the reigns of past queens.
On the Miss USA page, BI counted more than 80 Instagram posts of R’Bonney Gabriel, who won Miss USA in October 2022, and 90 posts of Morgan Romano, who assumed her title after Gabriel won Miss Universe in January 2023. There were also over 200 posts featuring Miss Teen USA 2022 Faron Medhi on its Instagram page.
Now, there are monthslong gaps between posts that previously featured Voigt or Srivastava.
Other than a post acknowledging Voigt’s resignation from May 6, the only photo that remains of her and Srivastava on the Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pages is one of them holding a check for a collaboration with Best Buddies, a longtime Miss USA sponsor, and Supermodels Unlimited, a pay-to-play magazine owned by Miss USA employee Kimberly Clark.
Neither of the pageant queens are tagged, and they’re barely discernible in the photo, which features a caption written by Rose.
Forgotten sponsors
Among the deleted Instagrams are posts made in collaboration with sponsors, who paid for Voigt and Srivastava’s travel, meals, and more in exchange for promotion.
Voigt’s sister Natasha Mihm accompanied her to High Point Market in April as her plus-one. Since Voigt had studied interior design, Mihm said it was a perfect partnership.
“In exchange for Noelia being there and promoting them, High Point Market covered everything,” Mihm said. “Miss USA did not cover a single thing, and that was in exchange for posts for the Miss USA page — and that’s all gone now.”
“It was a really nice and natural partnership that was mutually beneficial,” she added. “People at the market were super excited that Miss USA was there. I don’t understand why that partnership is just wiped now.”
Ben Muller, the vice president of marketing and communications for High Point Market, told BI that “we loved having Noelia here to support her aspirations in the design industry.” He declined to comment further on the Miss USA organization removing her Instagram posts.
But Mihm said removing them was “really strange.”
“It just feels very juvenile to me,” Mihm said. “As someone who loves Noelia and has seen her go through this experience and worked so hard to get to that point, it’s really sad. She gave something to the brand while she was there, even though she resigned.”
“It feels like they’re trying to erase the whole narrative in a way that feels like they don’t have to answer for it,” she added.
Voigt and Srivastava said they cannot speak about their experiences as Miss USA and Miss Teen USA.
Fadil Berisha
Maria Montgomery, Miss Kentucky 2009, took Voigt and Srivastava to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, in February for a sponsorship trip with Smile Train. She volunteered for the Miss USA organization and acted as their supervisor.
“It was a magical experience,” Montgomery said. “Smile Train took really great care of us and covered a lot of funds to have all three of us in a resort. Each day, we went out to different homes to visit patients who had cleft-lip surgery or were going to have surgery through Smile Train.”
“It’s a trip that Miss USA has taken every year for the past few years, and the girls have always said it’s one of their top experiences,” she added. “To see it firsthand was really special because both of these girls are bilingual. They were on the same level with these kids. We were there to help them, but these girls also had their lives touched just by being around them.”
Montgomery said she found it sad that the special memories from that trip were now erased from the Miss USA and Miss Teen USA Instagram pages.
“It’s obviously, on a personal level, very disrespectful,” Montgomery said. “But it also makes me feel like they want to hide that there were ever issues for girls to resign.”
“It’s very unfair for the differences these girls have made in other people’s lives,” she added. “The last thing we need to do is hide or silence either of them.”
In a statement sent to BI, Nicole Bell, Smile Train’s vice president of public relations, said the nonprofit extended “appreciation and gratitude to Noelia and Uma for their time and dedication to raising awareness about Smile Train.”
“For questions regarding what Miss USA decides to do with content on their various platforms, we defer to Miss USA,” Bell added.
Bringing up the past
The Miss USA Instagram page still has plenty of pictures of Savannah Gankiewicz, Voigt’s runner-up at Miss USA 2023, who took over the title after she resigned.
Gankiewicz made headlines after appearing on NewsNation the week before the Miss USA 2024 pageant, praising the organization. She said the allegations that Rose harassed Voigt and Srivastava were “completely false” and that it was Rose who had been “bullied.”
“Miss USA is an organization about empowerment, and that’s exactly what it does,” she added.
Savannah Gankiewicz with Miss USA CEO and president Laylah Rose.
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
Following the July 28 interview, Voigt posted a statement on her Instagram story saying she was “very disheartened to see a video today of someone completely invalidating my and UmaSofia’s experiences.”
“UmaSofia and I are unable to speak on our experiences at all, which is disappointing and difficult to deal with when false narratives are being created from all different directions,” she added. “If the intention is to empower women, why the need to invalidate their feelings and experiences and question the character of those who are now formerly part of the organization, who have stepped away and lost their dream or their career?”
Srivastava also posted a statement on her Instagram story, saying she would “not stand for someone impugning my or Noelia’s character.”
“Claiming that Noelia and I were not victims, but rather perpetrators of anything remotely close to ‘bullying,’ in the words of the current representative, is unfortunate, but reaffirms that my choice to distance myself from this organization was the right one,” she added.
Gankiewicz’s mother, Yvienne Peterson, added to the drama. In screenshots reviewed by BI, Peterson sent pageant fans direct messages about Voigt, including one that called her a “rude bitch” and “little troll.” She also left public comments on Miss USA fan pages attacking people who supported Voigt and Srivastava, claiming her daughter was always meant to win Miss USA.
“What I am is a bitch and I proudly own it,” she wrote in one on July 30. “I have to head out and continue to build my empire.”
Peterson and Gankiewicz did not respond to a request for comment on this story. However, in an interview with BI the day after her NewsNation appearance, Gankiewicz said she supported Voigt and Srivastava and “everything they went through.”
“I am sorry that that is what they experienced, but now it’s time to just empower an organization that they believed in,” she added. “So it’s time to spread love and show the new delegates and new winners that they, too, can keep going for this dream.”
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Publish date : 2024-08-16 06:09:00
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