This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.
Holly Huber is this year’s Miss Alaska Volunteer. It’s a newer crown within U.S. pageant system, and it focuses on what contestants do to support their communities.
Huber uses her platform to bring awareness to the mental health crisis in Alaska. Her duties include advocating, representing the pageant brand and the state, and, of course, posting pictures of herself as Miss Alaska on social media.
And a warning: this interview contains a mention of suicide.
Listen:
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Holly Huber: I’ve done pageants absolutely my entire life. If you’ve ever seen Toddlers and Tiaras, that’s basically a biopic of me. My mom was the ultimate pageant mom, she had all five of us doing pageants, including my little brothers. They were adorable.
But I’d never done a Miss USA or Miss Volunteer America or Miss America Pageant before. You know, those circuits are so glamorized. And they’re so big and well known that they’re kind of intimidating.
But when I turned 18, I competed for Miss Alaska USA for the first time. And I didn’t win, which if you look at the video, is no surprise. And then I competed again at 19. And again at 20.
And the reason that this system was created was really to focus more on what it means to be in pageantry and to hold a national title rather than what you look like when you hold that title.
Every pageant you compete for, you need to have a platform, which is basically something that you stand for. This one, they call it their initiative, and you have to put in work. It’s not just, “I like to donate to St. Jude’s. I like to go pick up trash on the side of the road.” You have to have such a developed and dedicated platform that really shows what you’re doing in your community and how you specifically are making a change. It’s not just “I want to do this,” it’s “I am doing this.”
My platform is called No Empty Hearts. It’s the platform I’ve been running with since I was about 16 years old. And what I do is I’m very focused on bringing comprehensive and accessible mental health care to my community here in Juneau and across Alaska.
Mental health has been a big issue in my family personally. My mom really struggled with her mental health growing up. You know, it really, really manifested physically for her. You know, she really always did her best as a mom, and she tried to do everything for her kids. But unfortunately, when I was 15 years old, my mom attempted to take her own life.
And — sorry — I had come home from my shift at McDonald’s, to the little room that we shared. And she was there completely unresponsive with an empty bottle of pills right near her. And I think in that moment, I just realized that it’s so much of a disease.
And it’s really unfortunate that children here don’t have the same kind of resources. Adults’ resources are abysmal. And it’s just, it’s something I’m fighting so hard to change. And I’m really excited to go to Nashville and fight for national resources for my community.
I prepped like crazy going to the gym. I did a lot of mental health work. I did a lot of journaling — everything that kind of made me feel prepared. And I competed for the title back in October and I won. So now I am Miss Alaska Volunteer and I get to go compete for the national title here in June.
I mean, everybody still calls them beauty pageants. And you know, when you’re so set in your ways, it’s hard to change that because for a long time, they were beauty pageants.
I mean, you look at old time, Miss USA, like back when Donald Trump owned it. It didn’t matter how educated you were, how involved you were. It didn’t matter what you were. If you weren’t a pretty face you weren’t getting on that stage.
And what I love about pageantry now is that beauty has completely changed. Beauty is a spectrum and every girl who gets on that stage is beautiful, because the reasons that she’s there is to make a change.
So the national competition is in June. It is in Jackson, Tennessee. I’ve already got to connect with so many of the girls who are competing in this pageant, and I’m so impressed.
Women are just so incredible and resilient and intense and just — we know what it’s like to fight. And so these girls are really bringing the fight.
