The first openly gay Miss England pageant winner says she is “in shock” following her win last week, five years after coming out and facing homophobic bullying at school.
Grace Richardson, 20, took home the title at the Miss England 2025 competition on Friday, November 21, making her the first openly gay woman to win the competition. She will represent England at the 2026 Miss World competition next year.
Richardson, a musical theater student at the Leicester College of Performing Arts and a part-time model, came out five years ago on TikTok, she told the Leicester Times. She faced frequent bullying from her classmates, she said, especially from boys in her class, who targeted her for her s3xuality and for being “too skinny.”
“I feel so powerful and proud of myself. My coming out story wasn’t the easiest,” Richardson reportedly said after her win. “My very close friends and family were all very supportive. But for some reason those at school, my peers, just weren’t in the same way that my family were. It was a struggle to accept myself while a lot of people weren’t accepting me.”
“It is important for young people in the LGBTQ community to see people representing them in all types of walks of life,” she added.
“I haven’t seen anyone in pageantry talk about sexuality in the way that I have so it is important to me for them to feel seen.” Richardson went on.
The Miss England finals went down to the wire with a tie-breaker largely decided by the talent portion of the pageant, organizers wrote on Instagram this weekend, with Richardson’s “show-stopping singing and dancing performance” putting her over the top.
“I wasn't expecting it to be me,” Richardson said following the competition. “There was so many incredible girls in that top 12 and I think all of them deserved to win.”
Beauty pageants have slowly opened up to out LGBTQ+ contestants and leadership over the past several years. In 2021, activist/model Lehlogonolo Machaba became the first transgender woman to compete in Miss South Africa. In September, Nguyen Huong Giang was announced as Vietnam’s representative in Miss Universe 2025, making her the first trans woman to represent Vietnam in the pageant.
0 Comments