A former Miss USA contestant said she regretted getting plastic surgery after losing her first pageant

• Former Miss USA contestant Rachel Slawson got plastic surgery when she started competing in pageants.
• Slawson, who won Miss Utah 2020, told Insider she got a breast augmentation that she later regretted.

When Rachel Slawson lost her first pageant, she decided she needed to change her appearance.

It was a decision the future Miss Utah regretted for years.

Slawson — who was the first openly bisexual contestant on the Miss USA stage — recently sat down with Insider to discuss how she went from being homeless to a pageant queen, and how she's preparing to compete at Miss Grand International 2023.

The Utah native competed in her first pageant when she was 19, hoping the experience would help build her self-esteem. But Slawson felt like an outlier.

"The very first time I competed, I was basically a tomboy," Slawson told Insider. "I had just donated all of my hair to India, so I had a pixie cut. I was definitely not what most of the women looked like. And I remember seeing the top five and a lot of them had very different body types than what I had."

"At that impressionable age, without a strong mentor in my life, I really internalized that," she added. "So I tried to change myself completely. I started really trying to diet and lose weight — and not in the most healthy ways — and also got a breast augmentation that went terribly wrong."

Slawson asked to be a 32D, but her doctor made her a 32DDD.

"So my whole body was changed at a really young age," Slawson said. "I ended up having that surgically fixed years later so I felt like myself again."

Slawson was initially looking for validation and acceptance when she began competing in pageants.

"I lived in Utah at the time. I was struggling with my sexuality and also struggling with myself as a person," Slawson said. "It seemed like pageants were a space where women were embraced for being sexy, and coming from a conservative community, that actually felt really freeing to me."

"So what led me to pageants at that age probably wasn't the healthiest motivation. I think a lot of it was looking for love from other people," she added. "But it ended up actually becoming very healthy for me over the years."

Slawson said her self-confidence significantly grew as her pageant career continued.

"It took me five tries to win Miss Utah USA, so I definitely faced a lot of rejection," Slawson said. "And I feel like every time I came back to compete, I was that much more sure of who I am as a person and I didn't need the approval I was originally seeking."

"I feel like every time I compete in a pageant, I genuinely leave a stronger version of myself," she added. "I love pageantry, it's part of why I was so excited to find the Grand USA system."

Slawson made history yet again this year when she became the first queer person to compete in Miss Grand USA. If she is crowned the winner on October 25, she will be the first queer woman to win Miss Grand International.