Her name was Yolande Betbeze. She was known by her friends and family as funny, smart, and beautiful. Most of all, she was a young woman who remained true to her own convictions. After she won the title of Miss America 1951, she refused to make public appearances wearing only a swimsuit. Her defiance and determination to be valued for more than just her physical beauty carved out a unique place in history for the Alabama native and changed the pageant world forever.
Yolande Betbeze was from a middle-class family in Mobile Bay. Her mother was a homemaker, and her father was a well-known butcher who owned a local barbeque stand. Yolande was raised with a strict Catholic background and attended a local Catholic convent school. It was her conservative religious upbringing that instilled a set of values in Yolande—values that she never abandoned.
As a quiet and shy bookworm, Yolande Betbeze was an unlikely pageant winner. She was also of French Basque descent, with fiery dark eyes, an olive complexion, and raven-colored hair. In the age of the blonde bombshell, she didn’t fit the image of the typical American Beauty Queen. In her own words, she was also a “late bloomer.” She dated very little, rarely wore makeup, and had braces on her teeth until the very day she left Mobile to compete in the Miss America pageant.