MISS NEW MEXICO!!!

It's not often we find a 'judges perspective' on a state pageant... so when we discovered a blog post by someone who judged Miss New Mexico Candice Bennatt, we thought we should share.  As written by musician Tom Sharpe (full blogpost available here).

        "Perhaps surprisingly for it being my first pageant, I went into this with extremely high expectations...  I knew I wasn’t just judging a beauty contest.  I had the bar set extremely high from the beginning and expected these ladies to nail it. 

          They nailed it.

         For 4 days, a panel of esteemed judges (and me, lol) was treated to a competition of 19 sophisticated, classy, charming, and talented young ladies.  All of who were absolutely beautiful in many ways.  It was a difficult judging process, and one that none of us took lightly.  We handled this with great care, knowing that we were going to change the life of one person forever, and hopefully inspire many of the contestants.         
          "...without going into any detail about the actual judging, we as a collective 7 judges are extremely proud of our new Miss New Mexico, CANDICE BENNATT.  Not only will she be a great ambassador for the state of New Mexico, I know that she is going to blow them away at the Miss America pageant. "

This is how we make believers out of the MAO system... one person at a time :)

Now - on to this year's competition! Lots of fresh faces at Miss NM...

Junkies Say Here's Who to Watch!

DeAnna Jerge - 3rd runner up in '12, Irish step dancer
Stephanie Chavez - 4th runner up in '12, 3rd time to Miss NM
Adrianne Jaramillo - NM OT competitor, baton
Gabrielle Torres - crazy photogenic - stands out 
Alexis Duprey - NM Teen USA '09, Top 10 '12
Shelby Marquez - Cheerleader U of NM, another photogenic girl