Putting elegance into age: US granny beauty queens

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Beauty pageants may conjure up images of young women in bikinis, but in Atlantic City a roomful of sequined grandmothers and great-grandmothers are putting their best stiletto forward.

From an ex-CIA employee to Whitney Houston's childhood choir director to a marathon runner, Ms Senior America celebrates women aged 60 and above who defy stereotypes of what it means to be ladies of a certain age who in past years may have sunk into a rocking chair.

"This is our age of elegance. It's the beginning. Not our end," beamed 73-year-old Carolyn Slade Harden, a former recording artist crowned Ms Senior America 2017, resplendent in cream silk.

With some members in their 90s, Ms Senior America is a family of sisters who have experienced not just the pleasures of life but the pains -- surviving cancer, going through divorce, losing husbands.

AFP photo‍

But if Ms Minnesota needed crutches to get on stage, Thursday's finals showed no one is ever too old to tap dance, sing or show off their curves in a sequined gown with a crown glittering on coiffed hair.

Senior America Inc. was founded in 1971 "to promote the positive aspects of aging" and has championed women in their "age of elegance" ever since.

There were 47.8 million people aged 65 and over in the United States in 2015, or 15 percent of the population -- a number projected to rise to 98.2 million, or nearly one in four residents by 2060.

Glittering in strapless gowns, mermaid dresses and princess frocks, state finalists from across the country flashed winning smiles, bedecked in a haze of sequins, hair spray and immaculate make-up.

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Source(s): AFP