After Miss USA Ended Its Age Limit, I Thought About Competing in My 40s. Why I Changed My Mind (Exclusive)

Lindsey Elmore is a speaker, wellness expert, podcast host, and licensed pharmacist — and she was hoping to become the next Miss Alabama.

After the Miss USA organization relaxed the age requirements last year, the 41-year-old tells PEOPLE that she realized she wanted another chance to compete after competing in pageants as a child and young woman, including Miss America.

Following the sudden resignations of Miss USA 2023 Noelie Voigt and Miss Teen USA 2023 Umasofia Srivastava earlier this month, Elmore talks about what she calls her own troubled time with the organization and why she realized she couldn’t risk a career for the title.

Miss USA did not respond to a request for comment about Elmore’s experience, but officials said in a previous statement that “we are committed to fostering a healthy, communicative and supportive environment for all contestants, state titleholders, national titleholders and staff.”

This is Elmore’s story, told to PEOPLE’s Anna Lazarus Caplan, in her own words.

I always loved dressing up, acting, all that as a child. My mom didn’t really want me to be a pageant kid in the TLC sense of the word, but she always let me be in a school pageant and always let me participate at some level. And I’m very comfortable on stage, always have been, even as a very, very young child.

It was easy for me on stage. I had no problem walking on stage, speaking on stage, performing. I loved theater and acting and all that. For me, who likes to perform, like to dress up, but also hang out with girls and women, it suited me perfectly. I always liked just hanging out and meeting girls and meeting women as I got older.

And so, when I was in college, I competed in Miss Alabama [for Miss America]. There are two main pageant systems, there is the Miss America system and the Miss USA system. The Miss USA system at the time, and even now, is much more about modeling and performance, as opposed to the Miss America system which is really more about — how do you get through school?

Lindsey Elmore.

Dr. Lindsey Elmore

I thought it would be a great fit for me to earn scholarship money. There is a huge service component with the Miss America system.

I competed on behalf of my alma mater, the University of Alabama, Birmingham, in the Miss Alabama pageant. I enjoyed it, but it was just a lot of time at the pageant, as we saw with Noelia, Miss USA who just stepped down, she tried for seven years to get this title.

This is very common within both competition systems, as it takes three to five to as many years as you can compete to actually win a title.

Fast forward to the Miss America pageant this year when Madison Marsh won, the first active duty member of the military to ever win. And since I’m dating someone in the military, I kind of liked it. And I always paid attention to Miss America, always. I interviewed Camille Schrier, who is the only practicing pharmacist who was Miss America, Grace Stanke, who is a nuclear engineer. They’ve all been on my podcast and I just love the way that pageant systems can empower women.

When I saw that the Miss USA system had lifted its age restrictions [from 29, unlike Miss America], I was like, you know what? That. What if I could work and help change that and raise awareness of issues that really matter to me as well as the organization?

Miss USA is affiliated with NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and I am affiliated with a company that is also affiliated with NAMI. So I said, okay, that’s a great relationship. Also, I am a licensed pharmacist and due to some personal things that have happened in my life, I have really fallen down the rabbit hole of pharmacy law and drug price negotiations. Americans don’t even know how much they are being ripped off due to the lack of government oversight and drug prices.

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And so I thought, I think this could be an absolute win across the board. I can support what’s important to Miss USA with a commitment to mental health, as well as hopefully start a national conversation about how we can do better in the practice of pharmacy and really help truly support the health of Americans. Therefore, we apply for a research call [with pageant officials] and we go to the research call, and it’s pretty much what you’d expect.

The next day we did an additional call with one of my co-workers, because I always like to have someone else listen with me just to make sure I hear all the things, and I banished some basic questions because the “older woman” coming into this competition, I have an established brand, I have more established companies. I have affiliate commissions, sales commissions, things I can’t give up. I have people whose lives depend on me being able to make a living so I can pay them.

So we asked some really basic questions past the director: Hey, am I going to keep control of my social media? Will I have control over what I post? And when I publish it, will I still be able to promote the products I promoted? Will I be able to choose the products I would like to promote on behalf of the state pageant as well as the national pageant?

Because I’ve also been an established brand for many, many years, I’ve had my reputation on the line that if they come to me and say, you absolutely have to promote this thing that you’ve been against for 10 years, I’m not going to sacrifice how hard I’ve worked to build my reputation just to I would have the title.

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[Even still, I was] so excited and so dedicated. I don’t go half way in anything. And so it wasn’t just the dresses, the photo, the swimsuit, the shoes — I mean trying on hair and makeup, everything for the photo shoot, signing up for an extra gym membership, going to the tanning salon, sacrificing skin in the name of everything, hiring a trainer for interviews, hiring a stage performance and I’m just pouring my whole heart and soul into this quest because I’ve decided I’m going to do this once.

If I win, great. If not, I’ll just see what doors it opens.

After submitting the paperwork [to be Miss Birmingham and compete for Miss Alabama]I come back from vacation and I get a text that says, “Hey, we’re missing these two things and can you fill them in?”

One of the things was the competitive contract [which was also shared with PEOPLE].

Lindsey Elmore.

Dr. Lindsey Elmore

I read that contract once and I said, “Okay, folks, we’ve got big problems.” Because it’s just basic stuff, there were multiple times where it was like, “Hey, this sentence directly contradicts itself.” For example, the contract would say something like, “It is our right to decide who will compete on the national stage.” But I thought the judges chose who would compete. Then in the same paragraph it says [something like] “Our only obligation to you as a winner is to allow you to compete on the national stage.”

That made me step back. If their only obligation to me is to allow me to compete, but then they can veto and not allow me to compete, they are not obligated to give me the crown, the belt, any financial support for the national level. There were no compensatory conditions for me. And so I read the contract, which is 24 pages, I read it very quickly, sent them a couple of just the logistics, “Hey, you’re asking me to confirm this? It does not exist in the contract. I’m confused about this and that” — and got nothing in return, except “we didn’t write this contract, our national team wrote it.”

I fully understand that the Miss USA system wants to protect its brand. They want to be represented by a certain type of woman. I completely understand that. However, what they are asking for in this contract is almost complete control. And so I got my associate involved because I knew they knew a lot about how to protect a brand and how to protect a trademark, an organization, and that person objected. Then we passed it on to a few other people – and the more we read it, the worse and worse and worse it got.

Noelia resigned with a statement saying “I am silent”. She was denied access to the Miss USA Instagram account, despite being the face of the organization. And what she stated was that it was a toxic environment, a controlling environment, and she was exposed to emails on a daily basis insisting on almost dictatorial control over social media.

That scared me, because I live on social networks. Then when UmaSofia resigned, I thought that something was very, very wrong here.

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At that point I just said [to myself], I don’t want to participate in the competition that I worked so hard for, was so excited about, I really thought it was a step forward for the organization to remove age restrictions. I thought it reflected so well on the value of women because women become so devalued as we age.

I was so excited – and I will say that the state directorate was good to me. They were good to me. I just think they have worked with this organization for a long time. And so in the end I just said, okay, I think it’s best for me to quit [in May as Miss Birmingham]. I did resign and I am very grateful to the state organization. They agreed to pay me back every part of the money they could.

I hope that by sharing my story, the young girls, women and their parents who have to sign on behalf of these teenagers will really ask “what am I really signing?” And I think they need to look at, okay, now you’re raising the age limit and you’re taking someone like me who has established companies and brands, established careers and you’re saying, “We need you to take a whole year off of your life, give up your existing contracts,” which just as have significant limitations on my ability to do business.

I really hope this shakes up the organization to realize that we are no longer in a time and place where anyone has the right to take away social media, someone’s voice, someone’s ability to follow their hopes, goals and dreams. And you certainly have no right to deny an adult woman the right to work. Certainly not with a contract where there are no compensation terms.

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Source: HIS Education