The Miss Texas USA competition is the pageant that selects the representative for the state Texas in the Miss USA pageant, and the name of the title held by that winner. This pageant is part of the Miss USA Organization, owned by Texas native Crystle Stewart, herself a Miss USA for 2008.
The current titleholder is Aarienna Ware of Dallas, Texas, was crowned Miss Texas USA 2024 on June 22, 2024, at Hilton Houston Post Oak Hotel in Houston, Texas. She will represent Texas at Miss USA 2024.
Background
Unlike the rest of Miss and Teen state pageants in the Miss USA system have annually scheduled at the same time, this Miss and Teen pageants in Texas are held separately in different months, the Miss pageant goes first and is held on first Sunday of September every year. Those events have affected from the regular September schedule such as the 2018 pageant was held in January 2018 due to Hurricane Harvey devastated the pageant's host city, Houston; and the 2021 pageant was held in September 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, exactly a year originally planned for September 2020.[9][10]
Ten Miss Texas USA titleholders have won the Miss USA title, including Chelsi Smith, has been crowned Miss Universe. In the 1980s Texas won the Miss USA title five consecutive years from 1985 to 1989, a streak known as the "Texas Aces".[11] Prior to this no state had ever won the Miss USA pageant more than two times in succession.[12] Past state directors have included Richard Guy and Rex Holt, "GuyRex" and Al and Gail Clark of "The Crystal Group".[13][7][1][14]
Contestants enter by winning local pageants or may choose to compete "at large" with an assigned title.[3][15] In 2001 a record number of former Miss Texas Teen USA winners, six, competed for the Miss Texas USA 2002 title.[8]
Texas Aces
Prior to the 1980s, no other state had won more than two Miss USA pageants in succession (the only two states to win twice in succession were Virginia in 1969-1970 and Illinois in 1973–1974). The five Texan Miss USA winners were all coached by "GuyRex", Richard Guy and Rex Holt, who held the Texas franchise from 1975. The term was first used in 1988 after Gibbs became their fourth consecutive titleholder, with Guy referring to the four queens as "four aces in a deck of cards", with their fifth titleholder, Kim Tomes (1977) as the "wildcard".[16] The following year Gretchen Polhemus became the fifth and final "ace". The term is still in use.
As well as directing the Texas pageant, GuyRex also acquired the Miss California USA franchise in 1986. In 1988, Diana Magaña of California placed first runner-up to Gibbs, the fourth ace. The two had both undergone extensive preparation by GuyRex, and even lived together prior to the pageant.[17][18]
Longest reigning Miss Texas USA (2 years and 3 days) and also the longest reigning Miss USA state titleholder under three calendar years in the organization's history
^"New Miss California". The San Francisco Chronicle. August 31, 1987. p. 6.
^"Bringing Up Beauty / In the months before the Miss USA Pageant, advisers work on Miss California". The San Francisco Chronicle. October 1, 1987. p. 6.
