Averie Bishop
The day of the school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Tex., last year, Averie Bishop posted a TikTok video, sobbing. “These things happen all the time and nothing changes,” she said.
After the Supreme Court overturned abortion rights, following her home state’s own restrictions, she posted again: “When you live in Texas and all you wanted was a hot girl summer, but now you have a ‘no reproductive rights’ summer.”
In March, she posted about the need for comprehensive sex education and mourned the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the abortion precedent abandoned by the court. In May, she posted videos touting the need for affordable health and reproductive care.
The fact that Bishop has professed her liberal views on race, abortion, immigration, voting, same-sex marriage, school shootings and comprehensive sex education — which Texas public schools don’t require — may not be surprising considering she’s 26.
What is startling is that Bishop has spoken out while competing for, and as, Miss Texas. The perch has normally been occupied by apolitical women, but in Bishop’s case, the pageant queen has used it to push back against the far-right policies supported by Texas’s White male leaders.
Her platform — diversity and inclusion — represents much of what Texas has been outlawing. In June alone, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed laws banning diversity offices and training at state universities, “sexually explicit” books at public schools, drag shows and gender-affirming care for youths.
The first Asian contestant to win the crown in the pageant’s 85 years, Bishop is an avatar for a rapidly diversifying state, one that despite its historic image is now majority minority, a change that is remaking cities, rural areas and political alliances, if not state leadership.
Bishop has done her share of lobbying them. In Austin, she met with Republican leaders to talk about the state’s needs. She pressed North Texas lawmakers against the bill to ban college diversity and inclusion programs, explaining how she had benefited from them.
The measure ultimately passed the Republican-controlled legislature along party lines, but Bishop still felt she made progress.
“To be seen, that’s the first step in making a lot of change,” she said.
For Bishop, being Miss Texas — a year-long role that ended Saturday — not only meant becoming a visual symbol for the state’s newest and least visible residents, but also having her legitimacy constantly challenged despite her rhinestone-studded crown and satiny white sash. Texans tell her they’re surprised she won, or that she can’t be Miss Texas because she’s not blond. Often, she said, older White Texans will ask, “Are you really Miss Texas?”
“It’s the ‘really,’ in that sentence, ‘Are you really Miss Texas?’ like, ‘What do you mean ‘really?’ I’m sitting in front of you!’” Bishop said.
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As Miss Texas, she’s traveled more often and farther than her predecessors, about 70,000 miles, speaking in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Connecticut, Ohio, Wisconsin and even England. She’s addressed scholars at Oxford and the national Cattle Feeders Association. She has driven more than 45,000 miles across Texas, cycling through seven cars from a pageant sponsor. Along the way, she has met with a Texas that looks more like her than the state’s political leadership.
“She’s a hero,” said Autumn Keiser, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas who tracks Bishop’s posts. “To be representing this so bravely, that is huge.”
Bishop was a reluctant beauty queen, an outlier in the highly-competitive “sash state” whose winners often go on to place at Miss America (Bishop won second runner-up at the national competition, at which she posted videos of herself on TikTok interviewing fellow contestants and dropping her trophy).
Scholarship prize money drew her to pageants, first Miss Lufkin in East Texas, then Miss Carrolton in the Dallas suburbs, Miss Dallas and ultimately, on her third try, Miss Texas. So far, she’s won nearly $90,000, putting a dent in her student debt (she also posts about her support for student loan forgiveness).She courted controversy from the start. During competitions, she said, pageant moms complained about her posts favoring Planned Parenthood or including Beyoncé songs with curse words.
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The crowd that gathered to watch Bishop parade through Fairfield looked like much of Texas. White cowboys herding longhorn cattle and Latino vaqueros with high-stepping Mexican dancing horses lined up to march through town. Miss Freestone County and Miss Freestone Teen, both blondes, appeared alongside contestants in this year’s pageant who were Black and Latina.
At the start of the parade, Bishop posed next to a cherry red 1951 convertible with the beaming woman who had donated it for her appearance: a gun belt manufacturer who wore earrings with tiny dangling revolvers. Floats lined up nearby, including one from Faith Academy of Freestone, which teaches creationism.
Bishop perched on the back of the convertible as it lurched past Robinson Trading Post’s “Guns, Knives and Ammo” sign and a truck bearing the bumper sticker “Make Texas A Country Again.”
While many only see that version of Texas, she believes young Texans are more open-minded, their views evolving through conversations like those she has had across the state where, polls show, most oppose state lawmakers’ stances defending guns and banning certain school books and most abortions.
“The core root issue when it comes to disrespecting people from different communities and putting down minority communities are people who did not receive an education‚” Bishop said. “ … These people will continue to grow up and act the way that they do when they are not called out for it or they don’t receive the proper tools to have those conversations.”
Her time as Miss Texas may be just the start of her campaign against those now in power. Within the next few years, Bishop hopes to run for a seat in the state legislature. “We are literally pushed to our wits’ end,” she said of young Texans. “We are equipped and ready and just waiting for the time for these individuals to be challenged.”
For now, she is trying to hasten the visibility of a changing state.
