Salon.com > miss usa http://www.salon.com Fri, 24 May 2013 01:55:23 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Miss USA wins Miss Universe title for first time in 15 years http://www.salon.com/2012/12/20/miss_usa_wins_miss_universe_title_for_first_time_in_15_years/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/20/miss_usa_wins_miss_universe_title_for_first_time_in_15_years/#comments Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:26:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13150985 Twenty-year-old Boston University sophomore Olivia Culpo is now the world's reigning beauty queen, winning the title of Miss Universe 2012 last night. Culpo is the first American to have this honor in 15 years.

Culpo, a Dean's List student and cellist who has played alongside Yo-Yo Ma and performed at Carnegie Hall, surprised her family when she decided to enter in the Miss Rhode Island pageant last year. “We didn’t know a thing about pageants,” said her father. He called her the “nerdiest” of her four siblings, and apparently she was “really chubby and sort of weird when she was younger," according to her brother. But Culpo went on to win the 2012 Miss Rhode Island crown (awarded in September 2011) -- wearing a rented $20 dress with a tear in it, no less.

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