Warner Robins' own Olivia McMillan won Miss America's Outstanding Teen 2015. Though her win is exciting, her journey to the top was less than perfect.
"I was told from day one that I was too big to compete in these pageants" said McMillan.
Competing as a teen wearing a size sixteen wasn't easy, and she quickly realized it wasn't healthy either.
"I lost fifty pounds to get to where I could be at a healthy weight for me." She says even after the weight loss, she can never be a size two.
"The stereotype for a pageant girl is a pencil thin girl with blonde hair and blue eyes" said McMillan, "and I am bi-racial. My mother was white, my father was black."
She says her strength to fight the stereotype came at a very young age. She was adopted as an infant by a Caucasian couple.
"It was tough growing up because people always have questions to ask because I don't look like my parents" said McMillan.
Answering those tough questions at a young age helped build tough skin. It also prepared her to answer the tough questions from pageant judges.
She advises young girls who are seeking pageant titles to be themselves, regardless of their size, or their skin.
"You can do it. You can break the mold just like I did" said McMillan.
She received a $30,000 scholarship from the Miss America's Outstanding Teen Organization.
She's says she's putting pageants on hold, in order to have a normal college experience
