Miss USA Transforms Into Optimus Prime

By Nick Venable | Published 10 years ago

You may all recall back in September when ignorant people across the Internet came together to take a collective shit on the newly crowned Miss America, Nina Davuluri, just because she was of Indian descent. And now Miss USA, Erin Brady (of Connecticut), is also a target of disdain, albeit for completely different reasons. For the National Costume Competition of the Miss Universe Pageant, an event where the contestants generally tend to honor their countries’ histories, Brady came out in full Transformers regalia, decked out from above-the-head to toe as Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots. One might think it’s just a publicity stunt that Michael Bay cooked up to promote his upcoming Transformers: Age of Extinction, but the esteemed director clearly had nothing to do with this, as there were no mega-explosions or mini-explosions or any explosions of any size.

It’s kind of a ridiculous choice, as gowns and dresses are the norm for this. I mean, a gown and a dress doesn’t exactly count as a costume by most people’s standards, but many of them made it work, such as the silver-and-gold-laden Miss Sweden, Alexandra Fribourg, who reflected her country’s Viking-filled past. The dress for Finland’s Lotta Hintsa was inspired by the Aurora Borealis and suitably has a lot of light blues and greens. The little bit of grid-patterned fabric that France’s Hinarani de Longeaux wore was in reference to the Eiffel Tower. And then there’s Brady bleeding red, white, and blue as a transformational robot. I mean, that’s what America is all about right?

I guess it would have been worse had she come out as an Abraham Lincoln-inspired version of Skids or Mudflap, rapping about freeing the slaves. Perhaps that’s the view of America that she is putting forth: “It can always get worse.”

Below you can find a few of the more impressive dresses, courtesy of the Daily Mail. It’s worth noting that no one from the Middle East was wearing a Decepticon costume.

You can find Age of Extinction in theaters on June 27, 2014, but if you just really need some Transformers in your life right now, go and pick up the pretty nifty pop-up book currently on sale. And if all you want to do is look at more women in dresses, check out the video below.

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