July 31, 2008: Vol. 31, No. 30
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Miss New York Leigh-Taylor Smith — who was just promoted from Miss Brooklyn — shows off her winning form along the DUMBO waterfront. Here, Smith enjoys her favorite paper.
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In an exclusive interview with The Brooklyn Paper, Leigh-Taylor Smith — the former Miss Brooklyn who will represent us in the Miss America pageant in January — silenced whispers about the authenticity of two of her assets.
“I’ve never had cosmetic surgery,” she said. “I’m comfortable with myself the way I am.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with it, she added.
“If it makes a woman — or a man — feel more comfortable with themselves, they should go ahead,” Smith said. “But I’ve never had it.”
Despite getting those accusations off her chest, the 22-year-old brunette bombshell did not fully appease skeptics.
“They’re too perfect,” said Peter Naas of Queens after seeing last week’s front page of The Brooklyn Paper, a collector’s edition that featured Smith in a two-piece bikini. “If she told me she could fly, I would believe her [more].”
Fellow observer Paul Walker also prefered to believe his own eyes rather than Smith’s claim.
“I’d say they’re fake,” said Walker, who lives the South Slope.
It’s not the first time Smith has come under scrutiny for not being a real New Yorker.
The vivacious Virginia native first took flak in February after she won the Miss Brooklyn tiara despite living in (say it ain’t so!) Manhattan.
At the time, Smith said she had strong ties to Brooklyn because she belongs to the Brooklyn Tabernacle, a church on Fulton Mall in Downtown.
But now, she has a broader take on the subject.
“I’m representing a state that is certainly known as a melting pot, and I’m a part of that, too,” she said.
And what could be more “New York” than coming to the city after college from another part of the country?
“She’s here living her dream to become an interior designer, and she’s here living her dream to be Miss America,” said Kimberly Thomas, executive director of the Miss Brooklyn pageant.“Isn’t that what New York is all about — moving here for greater opportunity?”
Now that Smith has put the controversies behind her, she promises that her tenure as Miss New York will be scandal-free.
“It’s about leading a respectable life,” said Smith. “You guys don’t have to worry about me.”
Smith — a University of Virginia alum who has twice volunteered in South Africa as an abstinence educator — is hoping to be crowned Miss America on a platform that calls for mandatory volunteerism for high school students.
©2008 The Brooklyn Paper
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