By: Relevant Staff
October 8, 2026
The crown is the least interesting thing about Regan Hutsell.
The 25-year-old Texan was crowned Miss America 2027 last month — the 99th woman to hold the title, the first woman of color to win wearing her natural hair. Before that she was a Radio City Rockette. She danced with the Birmingham Royal Ballet. She’s studying health sciences at Liberty University, planning to become a physical therapist.
But none of that is what she wants to talk about. She wants to talk about the years she spent trying to disappear.
Hutsell developed an eating disorder in the dance world — a place where your body isn’t just your body. It’s your instrument. Your résumé. The thing directors evaluate before you open your mouth. “For me, navigating that as a woman,” she told People, “I have to rely on what I would call my community service initiative, which talks about your body as your home.”
That language — your body is your home — didn’t come from a brand strategist. It came from a coach, on one of her worst days. “I want you to remember that even though your body has been your instrument, it is first and always your home.”
She’s honest about what it took to believe that. Not just mindset — clinical help. A psychologist. A dietitian. Real tools, wielded over real time, until she got to a place where she’s “happy, healthy, and secure.” The toolbox she built is now the one she hands to other girls through her initiative, Your Body Is Your Home.
Her faith also became part of that recovery.
Hutsell didn’t just reframe her body. She re-read it — through Psalm 139. “You truly have been perfectly crafted and created so beautifully, so intricately, so wonderfully,” she said recently. “I think a lot of us hear that verse, Psalm 139:14, that talks about how you’ve been fearfully and wonderfully made — but truly take time to sit with that, to resonate with it, and to realize that you have been created perfectly.”
In a culture that encourages young women to scrutinize their bodies, the reigning Miss America is quoting the Psalms and encouraging girls to see their bodies as home.
She was “really nervous” to even enter pageants — walking into the most appearance-obsessed arena on earth mid-recovery. What she found there surprised her: a fitness conversation that turned out to be “not about being your skinniest self” but “about being your healthiest and your strongest self.”
During semifinals, judges gave her 30 seconds on the word “courage.” She talked about the courage it takes to keep going — through the eating disorder, through two knee surgeries, through a season where she didn’t know what tomorrow would look like — and chase the thing anyway.
Asked what she wants her legacy to be, she said one word: hope.
“Having hope is what gets you through those moments. I’m hoping that when people see my reign… they’ve been inspired to go after something that might’ve challenged them, to chase the wild dream that they didn’t think they could accomplish, and to know that the sun will rise on the other side of your darkest times.”
For Hutsell, hope is more than a pageant platform.
Read the article here: https://relevantmagazine.com/culture/her-eating-disorder-nearly-broke-her-psalm-139-rebuilt-her-now-shes-miss-america/