It’s not, and never will be, clear why Cheslie Kryst took her life in Manhattan last weekend.
Media speculation in the days since has focused on social media trolls, Covid isolation, external or internal pressures, each speaking more clearly to their author’s agenda than the unknowable qualities of the beauty queen’s state of mind.
What is clear is that by 30, Kryst had achieved much: as a North Carolina attorney who fought for social justice and criminal justice reform, a long and triple jump competitor, as titleholder of Miss USA in a year that all four pageant winners (Universe, World, Teen) were women of color, and as creator of White Collar Glam and Emmy-nominated TV correspondent.
“She embodied grace, intelligence and passion,” said Dress for Success, the organization that empowers low-income women to achieve economic independence. “This is a tragic loss for all.”
“This hurts …and I can’t stop thinking about the lovely @chesliekryst,” shared Gayle King. “She was walking sunshine to me.. i knew her …cared about her …and am deeply saddened… how to explain the unexplainable?”
Authorities believe Cheslie took her own life. Her final Instagram post was a portrait captioned: “May this day bring you rest and peace.”
Her mother, April Simpkins, said in a statement: “Cheslie led both a public and a private life. In her private life, she was dealing with high-functioning depression which she hid from everyone – including me, her closest confidant – until very shortly before her death.” Her father, Rodney Kryst, told the New York Post he thought “it had a lot to do with family dysfunction … she was sad”.
But in her time Kryst burned brightly.
She was asked during her pageant appearance if she felt the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements had gone too far. She said no. The movements “are about making sure that we foster safe and inclusive workplaces. As an attorney, that’s exactly what I want to hear and that’s exactly what I want for this country.”
Last week, some who knew her were able to assess her impact. “Her death is an incredible tragedy, particularly for the many women and girls of color she inspired,” Keli Goff, the writer and columnist who included the beauty queen in her play The Glorious World of Crowns, Kinks and Curls after Kryst competed with natural hair, a signature she maintained.
Kryst and the other Black beauty queens from 2019, had a profound role in redefining global standards of beauty. “My hope is that her death will not be in vain, but will help end the silence, shame and stigma around mental health, particularly in the Black community,” Goff said.
According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), “suicide and mental health issues do not discriminate, and so it is imperative that we take an uncompromisingly anti-racist approach to improve access to culturally informed, evidence-based quality mental health care”.
Goff said she hoped Kryst’s death would not be in vain, and called on the media and those on social media who “thrive on negativity without fully realizing the potential real world harm it does …to take this conversation seriously and inspire all of us to work together to become part of the solution instead of the problem”.
Stephanie Dunivan, a vice-president at Essence who met Kryst at a cover shoot for the magazine in 2019, said Kryst was “beautifully articulate” and broke the stereotype of how people think of beauty queens. “She was absolutely stunning and gorgeous having a law degree and standing up for civil rights was definitely beyond skin, deep of what the stereotype of how people even think of beauty queens,” Dunivan said.
The significance of having three Black beauty queens in what had otherwise been a euro-centric sphere, and for Kryst to wear her hair naturally, was of “huge significance”, said Dunivan. California’s Crown Act (SB 188), which prohibits discrimination based on hair style and hair texture, had only recently passed, the first of a national roll-out of similar measures.
“Seeing that upheld in something as mainstream as a beauty pageant was super significant because there was a thought that natural hair was not professional and not glamorous. She was breaking the ceiling on how we categorize our natural hair, a moment where we can be celebrated as our truest selves and being put in a winning position,” she added.
Dunivan is cognizant that Kryst’s story is not exceptional in any grand sense – she faced many of the challenges of her gender and race, and some perhaps more acutely given the curse of hers or any public profile. “My challenge of the status quo certainly caught the attention of the trolls,” Kryst mentioned in an essay published by Allure magazine.
In the piece, she reflected on the challenges of growing older and challenging thinking about women’s appearances and opinions.
“A grinning, crinkly-eyed glance at my achievements thus far makes me giddy about laying the groundwork for more, but 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 wrote. “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.”
Dunivan said additional pressure is placed on women of color in terms of performance professionally and in terms of beauty and presentation.
“There’s this trope that we feel like we have to live up to is this strong Black woman archetype. But it leaves us being seen by the world as someone that doesn’t need to be protected, that does not need support. It often leaves us in a place where we don’t feel like we have room to break down or be weak. And I think that is actually to the detriment of our mental well-being.”
The other aspect, she says, is that women of color often feel that they have to perform better than others just to be seen as adequate.
“It’s an astronomical amount of pressure from both of those ends – and being the first generation to get a seat at the table and often being the only one. The pressure is not just representing yourself, being as excellent and competing with yourself, you’re also representing your whole community,” she said.
Still, with so little known, it may be better to return to Kryst’s accomplishments. After she won her pageant title, she remarked to CNN: “People didn’t think, ‘Oh, that’s enough [Black winners]. It’s still possible for us to be successful on your own merit. And it doesn’t matter if you look like the last winner, [if] you look like the last three. If you’re the best, you’re the best, and you can win.”
• This article was amended on 7 February 2022 to remove a quote from Miss Universe 2019, Zozibini Tunzi, which was wrongly attributed to Kryst.
• In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 and online chat is also available. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org
