Cheslie Kryst trolled: Miss USA 2019 spoke of being cyberbullied as well as her despair working as a lawyer along with her fears of turning 30 in an essay for Allure.
Former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst indicated in previous social media posts of being trolled and bullied online by commentators who believed she was unworthy of winning the beauty pageant. Also of disconcert, the 2019 Miss USA winner spoke of her frustration and despair working as a ‘billable’ high powered lawyer attorney just weeks before leaping to her death from NYC‘s Orion building over the weekend.
Kryst, 30, who also worked as a host for Extra TV was found on the sidewalk beneath her apartment building in midtown at 7.15am on Sunday. She was last seen on a 29th floor terrace in the building, where she lived alone in a ninth floor apartment.
In March last year, Kryst wrote about being trolled online and how winning Miss USA at the age of 28 made her a target for ageist bullies. She was the oldest person to have won the beauty pageant, and she also strayed from the norm with her passion for social justice – she was a trained lawyer and Black Lives Matter advocate.
In recent TikTok videos, Kryst revealed that she no longer wanted to practice law because she had ‘become sick’ of what she called constant microaggressions and a lack of diversity. In a video six days ago, she explained to a fan that she struggled to meet billable hours requirements, and that it felt like ‘trading in hours of my life in order to get paid.’
Writing ahead of her 30th birthday for Allure magazine, Kryst who seemingly had it all asked, ‘Why? Why earn more achievements just to collect another win? Why pursue another plaque or medal or line item on my resume if it’s for vanity’s sake, rather than out of passion? Why work so hard to capture the dreams I’ve been taught by society to want when I continue to only find emptiness?
‘I deleted vomit emojis and comments that I wasn’t pretty enough…’
And in another passage she asks forebodingly: ‘Each time I say “I’m turning 30,” I cringe a little. Sometimes I can successfully mask this uncomfortable response with excitement; other times, my enthusiasm feels hollow, like bad acting…turning 30 feels like a cold reminder that I’m running out of time to matter in society’s eyes — and it’s infuriating.’
She told how after winning the pageant in 2019, at 28, some petitioned for the age limit to be lowered because they thought she was too old. The win led to Kryst being trolled on social media for her athletic body, and telling of having to delete ‘vomit emojis’ beneath some of her posts on Instagram.
‘My challenge of the status quo certainly caught the attention of the trolls, and I can’t tell you how many times I have deleted comments on my social media pages that had vomit emojis and insults telling me I wasn’t pretty enough to be Miss USA or that my muscular build was actually a “man body,’ the beauty pageant winner in her Allure essay.
She talked about ringing in her 29th birthday alone in her apartment, wearing her Miss USA crown and ‘screening’ birthday calls.
‘After a year like 2020, you would think we’d learned that growing old is a treasure and maturity is a gift not everyone gets to enjoy,’ she wrote.
‘Far too many of us allow ourselves to be measured by a standard that some sternly refuse to challenge and others simply acquiesce to because fitting in and going with the flow is easier than rowing against the current. I fought this fight before and it’s the battle I’m currently fighting with 30.
‘How do I shake society’s unwavering norms when I’m facing the relentless tick of time? It’s the age-old question:
‘searching for joy and purpose on my own terms’
‘What happens when “immovable” meets “unstoppable”?’ she wrote.
The beauty pageant winner also expressed apprehensions as a woman turning 30, ‘felt like ‘a cold reminder’ that I was ‘running out of time to matter in society’s eyes”.
Challenges aside, Kryst said that she was excited for the year ahead, writing: ‘I now enter year 30 searching for joy and purpose on my own terms — and that feels like my own sweet victory.’
But it wasn’t to be…
Only hours before her suicide death, Kryst ‘hauntingly’ wrote on her Instagram page, ‘May this day bring you rest and peace.’
The beauty pageant winner, top upcoming lawyer who else held a dream job as a correspondent with EXTRA TV couldn’t keep up. What may have appeared as the perfect life for so many on the outside, what billboards beckoned so many young women to aspire to, was an existence that took a toll and on Kryst’s mental health and her will to live.
