Air Force officer-turned-Miss America shuts down Hollywood misconceptions about beauty queens

Madison Marsh, the first active-duty Air Force officer to be crowned Miss America, is challenging common misinterpretations of the pageantry world she has grown to love.

Marsh, 23, who previously held the title of Miss Colorado before earning 2024 Miss America, told Fox News Digital that beauty pageants aren't just about the glitz and glam so often featured in Hollywood films and on television screens.

"The Miss America organization, especially in my competition, almost all of my score was dependent on my public speaking and my community service," Marsh said. "In order to compete, you have to have a community service initiative. Mine is my nonprofit, the Whitney Marsh Foundation." 

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She added, "You've got public interviews, private interviews on stage, questions, political questions that you're having to answer in front of an entire audience, and then national live-streaming. All of that goes to say that the people … the girls and the women that I've met in the organization are some of the most well-spoken, passionate, intelligent people that I've met."

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"I think a lot of times people just pull up, you know, whatever has been made in Hollywood about silly, silly movies that have been made about pageant girls and assume that's all we are," Marsh said. 

"But for me, the most important thing to me is not what dress I'm wearing, what I'm doing on stage. It's what we're able to do for our communities. 

"I think a lot of times people just pull up, you know, whatever has been made in Hollywood about silly, silly movies that have been made about pageant girls and assume that's all we are."

— Madison Marsh

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"I want people to remember that this year, like even though I'm wearing this, I still get to serve in the Air Force, I still get to serve in my nonprofit or getting to serve with Pam Khan for a cause that is so important, like pancreatic cancer. It goes so far beyond the word pageant."

Pancreatic cancer is a cause she's been an active advocate for since Marsh lost her mother, Whitney, to the disease in 2018 at age 41.

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In addition to creating the Whitney Marsh Foundation in her honor, she's also an advocate and regularly lends her voice to The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN). 

Accompanied by PanCAN CEO Julie Fleshman, Madison will soon share her story with Congress on Capitol Hill in hopes of securing $25 million for pancreatic cancer research programs. 

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"We're also calling on Congress whenever we're meeting with these members to raise the budgets for the National Institute of Health, up to $51.3 billion in the National Cancer Institute to $7.934 billion," Marsh said. 

"And I think for me, even on a more personal level, since I've gotten to go to a lot of these meetings before in the past, just on my own, I want to make sure that even though we're calling for a lot of these fundraising levels to be increased, that at some point that that money is actually getting allocated back to pancreatic cancer."

"I want to make sure that even though we're calling for a lot of these fundraising levels to be increased, that at some point that money is actually getting allocated back to pancreatic cancer."

— Madison Marsh

She added, "Because when we compare pancreatic cancer – the No. 3 cancer killer in the United States – to the other top five, pancreatic cancer is receiving scraps and leftovers of funding, and it is receiving tens of millions of dollars less compared to the other top five. And I think that's really tragic because we have such a low survival rate."

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