Interview with Cassidy Wolf, the New Miss Teen USA

Two days after the 30th annual Miss Teen USA throwdown took place at a resort in the Bahamas, my phone rang at 2 PM exactly, just as planned. “Hi,” said a sweet and measured voice. “This is Cassidy Wolf, Miss Teen USA.”

Hi and congratulations! Have you had a super busy day?

This morning I was at Fox & Friends, then Inside Edition, then Teen Vogue, and now here!

I watched your Fox & Friends interview and saw that you’ve been dancing since you were two.

Yeah. When I started I was just doing ballet, but then at ten years old I started dancing competitively, so I had to adapt to other styles: contemporary, lyrical, modern. The whole shebang, except for hip hop and tap.

Here is the most important question I will ask you: DO you watch So You Think You Can Dance.

Of course! My really good friend Mackenzie was on my dance team and now she’s on it this season, so everyone should vote for her! It’s really amazing to see all my friends I grew up dancing with now auditioning and even competing on the show.

Yeah, what a platform for a young dancer.

It’s a great thing to have this commercial style out there. The girls who make it on the show end up becoming backup dancers for Taylor Swift and stuff.

Before you entered the pageant arena, had you imagined that your career would revolve around dance?

Well, the way I got involved in the first place was that I volunteered to help choreograph the opening number for Miss California in 2011. On the night of the actual event, I was watching backstage in the wings and I thought, “I’d really like to try this.” So I competed for Miss Teen California twice, and won the second time, and just two days ago went to Miss Teen USA, and that was it.

That is a very fast progression through the pageant world! You’re an exception, right?

Well, you’ll definitely meet girls who’ve done pageants all their life, but there are plenty of girls who won on their first try as well.

What’s your secret?

For me personally, I think the reason I did so well is because of dance. I’m used to being onstage, I know how to move in my body. I owe a lot to dance in general, but I really do when it comes to being able to make it in this world. But I do think that pageants really come down to the heart of a person. Judges can see through appearances.

You’ve modeled a bit too. Between modeling, pageants and dance: which is the most physically taxing, the most mentally taxing, the most fun?

Well, dance is my everything. Dance will always be instilled in me really deep; it’s my passion, what I love. Pageants are more like a hobby. They’re new and exciting, a way for me to find myself and open some new doors. And modeling is just pure fun. I like being in front of the camera, it’s not nearly as hard as preparing for a dance competition or a pageant.

Which do you have to wear the heaviest makeup for?

It’s all pretty equal. It’s a lot.

Are you ever just like GET THIS SHIT OFF MY FACE?

Oh yeah! Tomorrow I don’t have to put on all this TV makeup I’m wearing now and I’m excited that I get to wake up and just… wake up. But of course I do like to get dolled up every now and then, and I think there’ll be plenty of opportunities for that over the next year.

How would you say doing pageants taught you about yourself? Was it having to sit through so many interviews? Or was it just the act of doing something big and new?

The interviews definitely are a part of it. You have to really identify the things that are central to you, what inspires you, what you truly love in life. But it was also nice to take it all in as just an experience, just a thing I would do without changing the fact that I’m really just normal. I was there 100% for the experience of it, and I could feel that was true not just for me but for a lot of the girls around me. It sort of helped me picture who I’d be five years from now, ten years down the road, and know that I’d still be the same inside.

You’ve spent your whole life in fields that put very intense pressure on girls via their appearance. Does it ever get difficult dealing with that?

It’s human nature to compare yourself to others, I think, and it can be intense to be in an environment that is composed of so many beautiful girls. But I also think a lot of the way you operate in these situations has to do with your maturity level and your security level and your self-esteem. I think it’s just always important to remember what you value within yourself, your own good qualities.

And actually, all the girls I competed with last week were amazingly confident as well as beautiful, and there was really no cattiness.

So you’ll be moving to New York next year for college!

Yes! I’m studying at the New York Film Academy, going to be living in the dorms as a full-time student.

What’s your ideal end-point, career-wise?

Cat Deeley. (Ed: the host of So You Think You Can Dance.)

Hell yeah, she’s so cute.

Yeah! I would love to see myself in that position! But you know, I’m 19. I feel a certain amount of pressure to figure out what I want to do, but I think that over the course of next year I’ll discover myself even more. I think going to school in New York will really help me. And after this year, I want to get my bachelor’s degree in something, but I don’t want to decide until I have more direction. When I was in California, I was at a community college because I’m paying for school myself, I have loans, I grew up with a single mom. So I’m trying to be careful and taking these experiences one step at a time.

How much do you think people form their judgments of you based on your looks? You’re a super attractive girl and now a beauty queen, which of course is a wonderful way to relate to the world, but I wonder how often you’re met with dismissiveness or incorrect assumptions about your depth of character. I guess I’m saying I wouldn’t look at you and think “student loans.”

I definitely think there’s an instinct to look at people, especially people who you think are beautiful, and assume their life is a certain way based on that first impression. But everyone’s lives are different and complicated. I am sure people have made judgments about me based on my looks, but if they got to know me they’d learn that my life has been full of a lot of things: a lot of difficult times, as well as tons of great ones, like right now. I do know what you’re saying, though; when I went to community college, I was trying to create a new group of friends and saw that some people were standoffish or expected me to be that way, which was something I just adapted to until people got to know me.

Have you always been a West Coast person?

Born and raised in California. I’ve visited New York twice so far.

Are you excited to live in the city?

Yes! And kind of nervous!

Do you think you’ll switch your loyalties?

You know, I always was all about California for life, but today is my first day seeing New York in full swing, and the speed is so amazing, there’s just so much everywhere all the time and it’s all interesting. I don’t know! Ask me in a year.

So, you’ve talked about experiencing some alarming invasions of privacy. A few months ago, someone turned on your webcam without you knowing it, took pictures of you in your room, and then tried to extort money to prevent them from being leaked. And now there’s an ongoing federal investigation into the person who did this, and a big part of your platform is giving people practical advice on preventing this all from happening. But now you’re a public figure, and one whose job basically involves having swimsuit photos attached to your Google search. Do you worry about the anonymous attention that you could be receiving this year?

I know that with every good thing, there’s always something that isn’t the best. And this is incredibly worth it to me. I’m ready to do my best to ignore negative criticism and any ugly stuff that comes up. I have my friends and family, and they know who I am and that’s all that really matters to me. But this is so new, it’s just two days ago, I’ve never experienced attention to this extreme. So I guess I’ll just figure it out as I go.

What did it feel like in your body right before you were crowned?

This sounds so cheesy, but it felt like my heart was about to explode. I’d been getting the feeling a couple of weeks in advance, the anticipation that this could possibly change my life forever. I’d be sitting in my room and get these waves of emotion. But on that night it was the strongest: my body was shaking, my lips were twitching, my heart was out of control.

What was the first thing you did right after the pageant?

I walked through the lobby, and there were so many fans there, and the support was so wonderful and so intense, and after that I went to my room and put my pajamas and sat on the floor and got a quick little run-down of what the next week was going to be like. And then I checked my phone and got distracted for two hours, and then I went to sleep.