EXCL: Miss Earth implements new mental health initiative after Cheslie Kryst’s death

It took a woman jumping from the 29th floor of a Manhattan luxury apartment building for the pageant industry to incite change.  

Cheslie Kryst, 30, jumped to her death from a Midtown apartment building in January 2022 after losing her battle with high-functioning depression. 

Following her death, Miss USA announced it would be expanding its mental health services in an attempt to prevent another death after it failed to protect Cheslie – who openly talked about her struggles in the limelight. It started integrating new workshops to help ‘avoid depression’ and to generate coping mechanisms. 

Miss Earth USA followed in its footsteps, announcing what it claims will be biggest mental health initiative in the business – declaring that this is a pageant-wide issue. 

Many contestants came forward after Cheslie’s death to share their own struggles, including Miss Earth 2017 and one of Cheslie’s best friends, Andreia Gibau, 27, of Brooklyn, and current Miss Earth Eco Emma Loney, 25, of Wisconsin.

‘[Her death] made me realize it doesn’t matter how well known you are, what title you hold, how famous you are, mental health affects everybody. And that the pressures of pageantry are real and the expectations of being perfect or needing to be perfect are real,’ Loney told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview. 

‘I’ve definitely felt it myself and I was never Miss USA.’ 

The initiative includes different seminars, mindfulness breaks during pageant week, as well designating 10 wellness ambassadors – who are not only within Miss Earth USA, but across all pageants in the US. 

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Miss Earth USA’s National Director Laura Clark, 33, who is currently based in Switzerland, decided after Cheslie’s death that it wouldn’t happened again, not just in her own pageant, but all pageants. 

‘After Cheslie’s death, we said this is going to be a goal of ours to make sure that there is a clear initiative,’ Clark told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview. ‘That was definitely the turning point for me, personally, as the leader in the pageant community. 

‘To say that it’s all of our responsibility, to verbalize this and make this a priority in your organization and to say: “What is your plan?” And to put it out in the public and to make sure all your state directors and everyone understands that these are our policies that we are putting in place and this is the plan that we have to focus on.’ 

Beforehand, the Miss Earth USA pageant had offered goodie bags and consolation services backstage to its contestants who did not take home a ‘bigger crown,’ but has since shifted its focus to ‘integrating wellness and mental health into every aspect of our program,’ Clark told DailyMail.com. 

But in addition to the mindfulness breaks and and wellness ambassadors, Miss Earth also hired a licensed mental counselor to ‘develop a program’ for the ‘entire pageant community’ to eliminate the ‘go, go, go’ environment and teach women how to have goals outside a shiny crown. 

Clark’s team wants contestants to ‘take a break from perfectionism,’ a lesson she’s learned in the 20 years she’s been in the pageant industry. 

‘My biggest moment of stress when I was a pageant titleholder was the day I was giving up my crown,’ she said. ‘You feel [like]: Who am I now? You cross that moment of feeling, like, now all of the focus is on somebody else.’ 

Clark admitted she ‘cried within 30 minutes’ of the crowing, but learned it was a ‘release.’ The beauty queen herself had ‘family goals’ following the crowning and had something to put her mind toward, which she said helped her through the ‘big event.’ 

But a lot of beauty queens don’t share the same mindset. 

Clark is now gearing her work toward helping contestants who feel a similar way and make them aware that they ‘might feel this and might feel that, but that’s normal.’ 

‘We always say [to the contestants]: “Look, one of you is going home with a bigger crown, the other 50 of you are going home with the same title, the same crown as you came in with, which is your state title, which is of great importance as well. So feel accomplished to even have gotten this far, because there are so many women who would have wanted to take the stage,”‘ she told DailyMail.com. 

‘It’s completely natural that they’ve been focusing on the goal to win this title for so many months – and especially after a long week of activities and the emotions and adrenaline that goes into that week,’ she said. ‘Everyone is entitled to have their own feelings and to have their moment of [disappointment].’ 

She compared the disappointments and frustrations of pageantry to the NFL, where men so openly display their emotions at losing. 

‘The women are expected to always put on a pretty smiling face and they’re expected to go back out on stage for the crowning,’ Clark told DailyMail.com. She said the contestants get 30 to 60 minutes backstage before they’re asked to return for the crowning and found that many of them are ‘supportive of the outcome.’

‘But it’s natural for them to then go home and feel a little bit upset about it,’ she told DailyMail.com. 

Many contestants are so hyper-focused on winning that it can be hard to leave the bigger crown, Clark said, but unlike male athletes – who don’t face as much scrutiny when showing emotions – beauty queens are expected to be gracious and smile while watching the winner take her crown. 

‘I was heartbroken that I didn’t win, I took it so personally, and it hurt me for a little bit,’ Loney told DailyMail.com. 

One of the ‘big things’ being initiated to help combat the emotional rollercoaster of losing is ‘signing up and training wellness ambassadors’ – like Loney – to ‘recognize signs of other people who may be experiencing a crisis.’ 

The ambassadors program will provide Clark’s team with feedback, so it can be adjusted to continuously ‘help the community’ and hopefully avoid another suicide within its ranks. 

Most of the ambassadors will also derive from titleholders and other pageants have already begun implementing the initiative, Clark said. 

Clark also told DailyMail.com that the Miss Earth team also sends thank you letters to the women two weeks after the competition to let them know that they are still ‘supported and appreciated.’ 

Loney, recalled feel disappointed after losing her first pageant, the National American Miss, at the age of 18. 

Loney, who always strived to have a body-positive platform and show that beauty comes in any size, said she also ‘very quickly’ noticed the difference between herself and the other competitors at her first pageant. 

‘I realized I didn’t look like other women I was competing against,’ she said. ‘I quickly became insecure about that, and I was like: “Oh, do I even have a chance, I’m not skinny, all of these girls that are winning are skinny. Is this just not the place for me?”‘

It led to a year of ‘extreme dieting and exercise,’ which caused her to ‘lose the confidence [I had] because I was putting so much [mental] weight and expectations on my body.’ 

Not only did her journey with unhealthy eating habits shape her platform and belief system, but also watching her sister suffer through a serious eating disorder – another serious problem seen through the pageant industry. 

‘My sister was hospitalized with a really severe eating disorder my freshman year of college,’ the future lawyer – who will be graduating from the College of Law at Northern Illinois University this year – told DailyMail.com. 

‘Watching her struggle immensely with that was very hard for me, and [was] a big reason as well – if I continued in pageantry – to showcase that one body type is not the only beautiful body,’ she said. ‘She got help, and it was really hard, but she was able to get help. And as much as it seemed like at the time of “what could they do,” they could do something.

‘After all of that, I took a step back and said if I’m going to keep competing, I am going to fully embrace who I am. And that is being curvy and showcasing that you can be plus-sized and still be healthy. And that a woman can be confident and beautiful without being a size 0 or 2,’ she told DailyMail.com. 

Loney would go on to continue in pageantry and even stepped foot on the stage in a swimsuit for the first time in the Miss Earth USA pageant – a segment that would eventually become her ‘absolute favorite.’ 

She told DailyMail.com that she was ‘smaller than I am now’ during her first swimsuit competition and she wore a yellow bikini that she ‘really liked.’ 

The fearless beauty, who boasts 34,000 followers on Instagram, admitted she ‘wasn’t concerned’ about the segment at first, but that her family worried about ‘what if they see your back rolls?’ and worried she’d received ‘points off’ for her body shape. 

‘I was like, it’s whatever, it doesn’t matter,’ she told DailyMail.com. ‘But then it comes to being there and everybody’s in swimsuits backstage and I’m like: “Oh my god, I’m so much bigger than everybody else.” And then I still had to get up on stage.

‘I knew I was bigger than everybody else and I was comparing myself in my head to people and saying: “Ok, are [the judges] just going to give a zero because my body is not good to them?”‘ 

Loney would spend her few precious moments backstage pep-talking herself and reminding herself that she ‘felt confident in this body’ and that she ‘wasn’t here’ to just please the judges. 

‘I had to re-find that confidence really quickly, because I got on stage and competed,’ she told DailyMail.com. ‘The whole experience is something I won’t forget, because no matter how confident I went into it, standing next to 50 other women that did not look like me in a bikini was still hard.’ 

After getting off stage, Loney confidently reminded her that she ‘slayed’ and would go on to carry that confidence not only throughout her pageant journey, but her personal one – which is flawlessly displayed on her social media pages. 

Not only does Miss Earth USA strive to be inclusive and supportive of its contestants, but also it’s former contestants, such as Gibau. 

Gibau, who was crowned Miss Earth in 2017, was close friends with Cheslie and they had even made plans a few days prior to her death to film a YouTube video for Cheslie’s channel. 

‘She loves desserts and so do I, and we had the idea of going around to the best bakeries in New York and trying their cookies and trying all the desserts,’ Gibau told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview. 

After Cheslie’s death, the directors sent Gibau a gift basket filled with bath bombs and a selfcare book because they knew the pair was close. 

‘The assistant director actually sent me a care package, it was really sweet,’ Gibau told DailyMail.com. ‘It was super thoughtful, because it wasn’t flowers or “I’m so sorry, sending condolences,” but here’s this box of things that are going to make you feel better.’ 

The 2020 Miss USA New York also recalled standing in a Trader Joe’s when one her friends ‘hysterically’ FaceTimed her to tell her the tragic news. 

‘My immediate reaction was to text [Cheslie] and be like: “WTF, what is this?” And I’m like: “Girl, you better sue.” 

‘She’s a lawyer and I’m like: Is this some sort of big hoax?’ she told DailyMail.com. ‘It was just absolute disbelief for –  I want to say – at least 48 hours. And then all the flood works come in and it was absolutely heartbreaking.

‘She was someone that I looked up to so much,’ former Miss Earth USA told DailyMail.com.  

‘I wanted to emulate so much [of her] in who I am, and what I wanted to do in my career, and how I wanted to treat people, and the experiences I wanted to have, I related so much after her.’ 

Also throughout May, which was Mental Health Awareness Month, Clark challenged contestants to post about the bad days too to show their followers and themselves that they don’t always have to be perfect. 

‘We did a daily challenge and some of those were testimonies like: ‘Hey, what happens on your bad days?” 

Loney recently recalled posting about skipping classes on one of her down days – a move she would have ‘never done before.’ But she reminded herself that a lot of other people are going through similar experiences and this would be ‘one small’ step closer to being transparent with her followers. 

‘A little bit after the [Miss Earth] national pageant and especially with what happened with Cheslie, I tried to be even more transparent on social media,’ she told DailyMail.com. ‘I really wanted to show that there are days that are really hard that you would normally never see. There are days that I am really struggling.’ 

Although Miss Earth’s mental health initiative is still the early development stages and it will continue to roll out more programs as time goes on, Clark wanted to start stepping away from ‘winning culture.’ 

Miss Earth USA’s ultimate goal is to create leaders in the industry, rather than titleholders, Clark told DailyMail.com. 

Despite its long list of ‘international wins’ between Miss Earth, Mrs. Earth, and Teen Earth, Clark said she wanted to focus more on personal accomplishments. 

‘We are looking for excellence, but that’s not necessarily perfection, [but] that is professionalism, that is embracing the legacy, that is taking responsibility for the role and the mission,’ Clark told DailyMail.com. ‘Even if they don’t win the national crown, [we want them] to feel accomplished through the process.’ 

In the end, Clark wants to shift the idea of achievement from winning and talk to each delegate about what their definition is – to expand the purpose beyond winning, but to have a platform. 

Ultimately, she wants to leave each contestant with a purpose and an understanding that they are worth so much more than a glittering crown. 

‘It’s okay for you not to have a plan, it’s okay to let life unfold and not have the next big thing,’ she told DailyMail.com. 

Although the Miss Earth USA pageant acknowledges the difficulty of integrating an entire industry remodel, it wants to remind both the women inside and outside of the community that winning isn’t everything and to ‘not break your back over a pimple.’ 

For many contestants, Cheslie’s devastating passing made them look internally, and it was no different for Gibau and Loney. 

Both women expressed anxiety around the feeling of needing to be ‘picture perfect’ all the time. Both of them – who started competing in pageants at 18 and 16, respectively – found out quite quickly that they didn’t fit the beauty queen standard: blonde hair, blue eyes, and impossibly skinny, but especially for the former, who immigrated to the US at a young age. 

Gibau, an immigrant from Cape Verde, originally found pageantry ‘extremely unattainable.’ 

‘To me, these women were all tall, blonde hair and blue eyes – the complete opposite of what I looked like – and what I ever imagined myself doing,’ she told DailyMail.com. 

The now-New Yorker first landing in ‘intercity’ Massachusetts before eventually ending up in the Empire State. Without knowing the language, she endured bullying from other students and was even dubbed a ‘mute’ – a nickname she didn’t bother to prove otherwise for the longest time. 

The young girl eventually picked up the language and went on to learn many more, but her multilingual skill set was another thorn in her side, another clue that she was different than those around her. 

She would eventually give herself a more American nickname and started calling herself Nikki to distance herself from her African heritage. 

‘I had all my friends call me that,’ she wrote for Swaay in 2020. ‘I never recognized the amount of self-hatred that I was experiencing at this time. I disowned everything I was to be someone I wasn’t.’ 

As she grew older and watched her friends ‘make fun of all the other immigrant students who couldn’t speak English,’ she kept her own immigrant status a secret out of fear they would ‘mock [her] mercilessly.’ 

But like other immigrant children, Gibau watched her parents work ‘three factory jobs each’ and having to ‘work in that state of excellence,’ which would eventually lead to her ‘always be on,’ always being driving to succeed. 

‘In feeling, back then, that no one really cared about me, not feeling [like I had] a space I was valued at all – I didn’t feel valued when I was made fun of – I feel like it’s given me this thing that I always have something to prove,’ she told DailyMail.com. 

‘I’m proving that I belong here in this country. I’m proving that I deserve this opportunity. I’m proving that I can do what I’m tasked to do and do it well. 

‘I feel like a lot of people that may not have had the experience that I did don’t necessarily think through that perspective and in that light,’ she told DailyMail.com. 

She would go on to always be known for ‘delivering excellence’ and would often hear: ‘Andreia is always on!’ 

It is now something she is actively working on in therapy, to unlearn the mental constraints of always having to be perfect and always having to achieve something.  

‘It’s something that I talk to my therapist a lot about, is feeling a sense of a concept that I’ve achieved so much, but at the same time, feeling like I haven’t achieved anything,’ she told DailyMail.com. 

‘I haven’t taken my foot off the gas pedal at all.’

Although neither woman said they experienced the amount of stress and anxiety that Cheslie did, they certainly have experienced a fair amount. 

As a titleholder, Gibau said she felt immense ‘pressure’ as people began to look up to her. 

‘These people don’t necessarily know you in your own personal life. They don’t know you how your closest friends, your mom, and your boyfriend, or someone super, super close to you day-to-day knows you,’ she told DailyMail.com. 

‘These people know you when you’re all dressed up, they know you on your highlight reel on your Instagram, they know you when you’re walking the Miss USA stage, and what you’re externally presenting them. That’s the kind of person that they know, so to be super vulnerable with who you really are day-in-and-day-out, these people have no idea about, they don’t see the struggles. You don’t feel like you have a space to just be venerable. 

‘And because you’re not just this façade of a titleholder 24/7 – that’s not who you are entirely – we leave a big part of ourselves just there to struggle. And I think with pageants – wanting to do that intentionally or not – that’s just the way that it’s been, until we start creating space for titleholders to just be human beings,’ the former 2020 Miss USA New York told DailyMail.com. 

Like all areas of life, having a support system can make or break just about anything and pageantry is no different. 

Loney told DailyMail.com that she still feels ‘a little bit of pressure to look like everybody else’ and her anxiety can make her ‘fixate’ on what others have said about her at times.

‘[My anxiety] made me fixate on things sometimes and worry about things that were said and I would still worry about things that were said to me many years ago,’ she told DailyMail.com. 

A large part of moving past the hurtful comments and the intrusive thoughts for Loney was ‘proving it wrong.’ However, she said that people often disregard those past hurtful comments and neglect to recognize that it can be a ‘trauma.’ 

‘It’s always going to be there, it’s just a matter of living with it,’ she said. 

Loney also said she knew she had to ‘try and change pageantry’ after losing the National American Miss pageant. 

One of the ways Loney keeps going is through her undying support system. After getting off stage at her first swimsuit competition, her mother was screaming in the crowd. 

‘My mom has been an amazing support system,’ she told DailyMail.com. ‘My mom was in the audience and she’s screaming. She said off stage: “You look so good, so confident.”‘  

Loney said support systems ‘absolutely impacts your mental health’ throughout the pageant cycle and help the women who don’t go home with a bigger crown move on

‘I think women who have a really strong support system do better once they leave the pageant because they’re happy and feel loved regardless,’ she told DailyMail.com. 

‘And the women that don’t put so much pressure on themselves to do well and don’t have that support system telling them all the things you wanna hear when you don’t do well in a pageant.’

Loney would eventually continue on to be an ambassador for Rihanna’s Fenty company – a moment she spoke about with a broad smile on her face. Rihanna’s company has gone on to break industry standards, showcasing all types of bodies and women in all walks of life on the runway and in campaign ads. 

‘When they’re marketing company reached out to me, I was absolutely elated. I was so excited,’ she told DailyMail.com. ‘They’re inclusive in so many capacities, and it’s everything I want the world to be.

‘I wish that was pageantry. I wish that pageantry could be this inclusive and pageantry has so far to go,’ she told DailyMail.com.