Take notes, competitors! Ahead of Sunday’s beleaguered Miss USA pageant, Us Weekly took a look back at the various competitions that came before it, combing through hours of footage to find the biggest beauty pageant fails of all time.
While pageants have been early career steps for stars from Eva Longoria to Vanessa Lachey to Halle Berry, they have also played host to some of the most awkward moments in live television history. Whether it’s a painful fall from the competitor’s towering high heels or an excruciatingly awkward answer to an interview question, the pageants provide priceless fail fodder.
In one particularly famous slipup, Miss South Carolina Teen USA Caitlin Upton was asked by a judge, “Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the U.S. on a world map — why do you think this is?”
Upton struggled to answer, responding, “I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and I believe that our education like such as, uh, South Africa and the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should… our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., or, should help South Africa, it should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for us.”
Catch this and other wild pageant moments in the video above!
