Ms. Veteran America: Healing in heels

LEESBURG, Va. — As a military police officer in Iraq, Marissa Strock wore combat boots and military fatigues every day for more than seven months. But last weekend, she donned a very different outfit: sandals and a black-sequined white dress that turned transparent below the knees to reveal metal prosthetic legs.

As she walked, haltingly, across the stage at the Ms. Veteran America competition, her friends and family cheered in encouragement. It was almost eight years since Strock lost both her legs after a roadside bomb struck her armored vehicle in Baghdad.

She was one of 17 participants in this year’s Ms. Veteran America contest, all of them female military veterans or active service members. They had flown in from across the country to compete.

"This is about our service and about our femininity," Strock, 28, told Al Jazeera. She said the contest is "not just geared toward 18-year-old skinny girls. It's not a swimsuit pageant."

The competition was started last year to raise money for Final Salute, an organization that offers shelter to homeless female veterans in Ohio and Virginia. Jaspen Boothe, its founder, says the competition aims to celebrate women's more traditional roles — as mothers, wives and daughters — that remain camouflaged behind military uniforms.     

"We simply join the military in order to serve, but we have to give up so much of ourselves as women in order to do that," she said. "What's wrong with being women and enjoying that part of ourselves?"

Some of the participants, like last year's queen, Denyse Gordon — who has since become an advocate against military sexual assault — said they initially scoffed upon receiving emailed invitations to the event. But, they said, it's not a traditional pageant so much as a chance to raise awareness about the challenges many female veterans face. The participants at last weekend's contest raised their voices about the troubles plaguing many women as they serve in and after they return from the military — homelessness, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), sexual assault.

Tonya Rupe, a 23-year-old veteran who had traveled from Rutland, Vt., with her friend Wendi Fitzgerald to participate, nervously waited her turn. She was dressed in a khaki uniform designed by Fitzgerald and was poised to play "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" on the saxophone, her favorite instrument since she was 8.

She'd purchased a dress for the next day's stage appearance: a blue satin gown that bared her shoulders and hugged her slender figure. She'd been dieting for several days, she said, to fit into the gown. A silver pair of heels and a large tattoo on her left arm of a flower and a pond — a scene that reminds her of her childhood — complemented her outfit.

When the judges asked why she chose to compete, Rupe got a chance to talk about her own experience with homelessness. It's a not uncommon plight for female veterans: They are the fastest-growing group among the homeless in the U.S. and are more likely than male veterans to be uninsured and living in poverty, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Roughly 55,000 female vets were homeless last year.

An information-technology officer who served in Iraq until August 2011, Rupe said she struggled to find a job after her return. Her relationship with her boyfriend soured, and PTSD symptoms surfaced.

By November of that year, she was living out of her truck.

"Everyone says they want to hire veterans, but it doesn't always work out that way," she said. "I didn't have the savings that I needed."

She later found transitional housing at a shelter similar to Boothe's and now serves with the National Guard. She got a job in communications and lives in a rented apartment — achievements, Fitzgerald suggested, that eased Rupe's disappointment over not making the final round.

Minutes later, Kerri Brantley, a public-affairs officer in the National Guard from Boise, Idaho, took the stage.

Brantley, 30, a brunette with brown eyes and a wide smile, said she entered the military to provide for her family. Her three children lived with their fathers while she was deployed to Kuwait in August of last year.

Brantley said she saw Ms. Vet as an opportunity to highlight the role of service members who are mothers. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, female veterans are more likely to be divorced and to have younger children under their care than civilian women.

She read a poem, "Beautiful Soldier," that she'd been working on for weeks, rehearsing in her car while picking up her children from school and doing grocery shopping.  

"She provides offspring by signing the line meant for the bold," she recited. "She comes back to the heartland and sees how her children have grown."

Meanwhile, Strock was waiting nervously backstage to perform. She'd changed out of her sequins and into jeans over black boots, which she deemed more fitting for the jokes she was about to tell.

"It's taken a long time to get to the place where I was comfortable enough in my new metal set to be able to get on the stage — and not only be on the stage but say, 'Look at me, this is what it is,'" said Strock, who is from Petersburg, Va.

She began her comedy routine with a joke about arriving late onstage after mixing up her prosthetic feet.

"I took my legs off to change my shoes, and I put my right foot on my left leg, and it was a mess," she said as the audience roared with laughter.

After a five-minute act, she thanked the crowd, saying it was an honor to perform.

"I'm just really sad that only two-thirds of me made it," she said, to even more laughter.

The Ms. Veteran America title was awarded later Sunday evening to Alainna Guitron, a 31-year-old Army photographer and videographer.

Guitron, from Syracuse, N.Y., looked very much the pageant queen as she smiled for the flashing cameras, wearing her new crown and sash. She pledged to follow in Gordon's footsteps and become an advocate for homeless female veterans. Guitron was exposed to the issue early in life: Her mother fell in and out of homelessness, she said, leaving her in foster care until she was old enough to take custody of her brother.

Brantley took second runner-up, as well as the Hot Momma award. Strock, grinning widely as her mother, fiance and best friend cheered her on, was awarded three trophies: one for significant military achievement, a second for raising the most money for Final Salute and a third for best dress.

"I feel amazing," Strock had said earlier that evening as she changed into her evening gown to get ready for the pageant's last round of questions for the three finalists. "There is nothing that I've done that is so much fun."