Marietta woman competes for Miss America crown

A Miss Georgia hasn’t claimed the Miss America crown since Neva Jane Langley of Macon won it in 1953. But Christina McCauley of Marietta hopes to put the state back on top of  the pageant's map after she competes in Las Vegas on Saturday.

“I think it’s time for Miss Georgia to win again,” McCauley said. “I am ready for it. I want to be the last girl standing.”

McCauley, 22, won the Miss Georgia pageant in June as Miss Southern Heartland on her fourth try.  She previously competed as Miss Cherokee County, Miss Cobb County and Miss Southern Empire, and was first runnerup in Georgia's 2005 Miss Junior Miss Pageant.

Her father, Jack McCauley, said his daughter has always been determined. “When she makes up her mind to do something, she does it.”

The west Marietta resident is 5-feet-7-inches tall and is of Filipino and Irish descent. She began taking voice and piano lessons when she was 7 and plans to sing an aria from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute" for the talent portion of the national contest. Although classically trained, she loves to sing country music with her father and two sisters.

After pageant events got under way in Las Vegas last Thursday, McCauley learned she was among eight finalists for the quality of life scholarship for outstanding community service.  Miss Oklahoma, Taylor Treat, won the $6,000 service scholarship last year.

Scholarship money has fueled her interest in pageants. McCauley has won nearly $50,000, paying for her degree in music at Birmingham Southern College where she graduated magna cum laude  in May.  She  plans to use money from the Miss Georgia contest to help cover studies for a master’s degree in music and early childhood education.

“I didn’t start young. I wasn’t a toddler in a tiara,” McCauley said. “I wasn’t a girly-girl. I had to learn to be pretty.”

Music was her focus when she was younger. She said singing took her mind off the discomfort of a back brace she wore from age 10 to 14 because of scoliosis. She said the brace helped shape her into a resilient person. Her platform issue for the pageant is scoliosis awareness.

"I was nerdy and felt awkward," McCauley said. "If someone had told me when I was 10 that I would turn out like this, I never would have believed it.”

McCauley was a student in the performing arts program at Pebblebrook High School when she entered her first competition at 16. She heard about Cobb’s Talented Teen contest and was the last girl to register.

She won after singing a classical aria that she had performed earlier in the day at an audition for the Governor’s Honors Program. McCauley was later a state finalist for the honors program and Pebblebrook’s salutatorian in 2006.