She's the second consecutive New York beauty queen to take the Miss America title, but she's the first Indian-American to wear the national crown -- er, tiara -- atop her perfectly coiffed head.
"I was the first Indian Miss New York, and I'm so proud to be the first Indian Miss America," Nina Davuluri said after she won.
Davuluri's resume goes considerably deeper than her heritage, however.
The 24-year-old
Fayetteville, New York, native was on the dean's list and earned the
Michigan Merit Award and National Honor Society nods while studying at
the University of Michigan, where she graduated with a degree in brain
behavior and cognitive science.
Her father, who emigrated
from India 30 years ago, is a gynecologist, and Davuluri said she'd
like to become a physician one day as well.
"During her year as Miss
America she will serve as spokesperson for STEM (science, technology,
engineering and mathematics) this year as she travels to Washington,
D.C., to work with the Department of Education," according to a Miss
America statement.
She also is passionate about healthy lifestyles after battling obesity and bulimia when she was younger.
Davuluri's platform was
"Celebrating Diversity Through Cultural Competency." For the talent
portion of the competition, she performed classic Indian dances fused
with Bollywood moves.
She has studied the
Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam styles of dance, and in preparation for the
Miss America contest, she worked with famed Bollywood choreographer
Nakul Dev Mahajan.
Miss California Crystal
Lee was first runner-up, and Miss Oklahoma Kelsey Griswold was second
runner-up, while Theresa Vail, the tattooed, bow-hunting, Chinese-speaking Miss Kansas, won the online viewers' poll.
Despite a night of
firsts, a tired theme emerged following Davuluri's victory: Racists took
to Twitter to lambaste the pageant for picking an Indian-American. They
were none too kind to Davuluri herself, either, with one particularly
uninformed tweeter calling her a Muslim.
Something similar happened when Rima Fakih was crowned Miss USA in 2010. Fakih is of Lebanese descent, and many were quick to try to link her to the militant group Hezbollah.
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