photographer Brian Freer
makeup artist Margaret Parr
Yvette Blaess’ natural father broke camp when she was still in utero and left the family bootstrapping in a Georgia trailer park. Her mother juggled her military career, attended school and cared for Blaess and her sister. She eventually enlisted the help of Blaess’ grandmother to care for the girls while she rebuilt their lives.
A few years later, when Blaess was 4 and her sister, 6, her mother again was faced with a difficult challenge —accept a promotion with the United States Army that involved more schooling, or pass on the opportunity. The single mother of two opted for the promotion as a way to help her family and in doing so had to choose temporary foster care for her children while she trained. Blaess hated the separation.
“It was the worst experience I could have had as a child,” she recalls. “They didn’t care for us. We had meals and a roof over our head, but they had other kids and we felt like a burden.”
Blaess and her sister spent six months in foster care. When her mother’s boyfriend got wind of what was happening via a letter from Blaess’ mother, the green beret took emergency leave from his mission overseas, flew back to the U.S., married her mother, and had the kids sent to her.
“[When he] found out, [he] married my mom and then went back on his mission. He did that so we could get out of foster care. He gave us his last name and that got us all of the benefits of living on base so that we could have childcare and get back with our mother,” says Blaess.
Blaess turned her attention to cheerleading. For 10 years, she competed around the globe taking her new dad everywhere with her. But even amidst the fun of competitive cheer, she felt like an outcast primarily because of a new challenge in her academic life—Blaess had a learning disability. “I was diagnosed when I was in third or fourth grade,” remembers.
And a few years later, puberty didn’t help her cause, either. It created a bullying problem centered around her.
“I started getting a lot of attention from boys,” shares Blaess. “I was friends with a lot of the guys and I liked to play basketball.
Girls in her class would talk poorly of her, sometimes approaching her and making remarks nasty to her face. Boys would act inappropriately towards her, too.
“In middle school I was bullied and sexually harassed. Guys in the halls would touch me. Girls would call me names. This went on for two years,” she recounts. “They caught a guy on camera grabbing me and pushing me against a wall.”
Blaess had to be escorted to all of her classes, eat lunch with her teachers and sit with her vice principal during school events. It became such a distraction that she had to exit public school.
“This time shaped my depression and alcoholism,” tells Blaess who admits that the isolation led her to pick up drinking at age 14.
Meanwhile, Blaess still couldn’t read. She was failing tests and shuffling between special education schools, Christian schools, and private schools for the next three years. When she finally returned to public school, she was a high school junior. Right before that, she met someone. Though the relationship started out blissfully, within a year, it became anything but.
“He was my high school sweetheart. You had the cheerleader and the hot guy,” she says, with a bounce in her voice before dropping an octave. “But a year later, he was sexually abusing me. He was also bullying me. I still have lighter burns from him on my arm.”
Further bullying led to a sexual assault instigated by her former sweetheart.
“He would tell people that ‘She’s this, she’s that’ and people would believe him. My family knew that I was having a hard time, but they didn’t know about any of this. They didn’t realize that [my depression] was coming from my social life,” says Blaess.
She eventually completed high school receiving a special education diploma, but found herself in an adult world with little direction. She enrolled at Tidewater Community College, but confesses that she was “completely lost.” At 19 years old, still depressed, still drinking, Blaess sought help.
“When I checked into rehab, I was drinking rum and Coke every morning. Even after checking out, I continued to drink,” she says.
But shortly after her rehab stint, Blaess had an epiphany. The self-destructive patterns of her life were staring back at her.
“I got to a point where I had went through several mentally and physically abusive relationships. I was repeating the same things over and over again. I got sick of it,” she says. “I wrote down everything that drove me into depression and what I didn’t like about my life. I answered honestly. I wrote that I wanted to make a difference. I have a passion for people. I found my niche and I went for it.”
That’s when Blaess discovered pageants—the perfect vehicle for someone with strikingly good looks and a huge heart.
“Pageants are a lot about what you’re doing in the community and what you can do to help someone else. I love that. I tried it out and I’m hooked,” she exclaims.
In 2015, Blaess won Miss Virginia Beach United States building her platform on something close to her heart.
“My platform was foster care. It started my entire life. I chose it because it was a small story, but led to other big events [in my life],” says Blaess, who promotes Braley & Thompson in Chesapeake—a therapeutic foster care agency that helps children get placed into loving homes—and other charities.
She’s now competing now for Miss America World where platform is beauty with a purpose, foster care and helping people.
“I help people that want to reach their goals. I know I can provide that for them. At one time in my life, I needed that push. I can be for someone else what I wanted,” she says.
Blaess is currently writing a book, working within the community with anti-bullying groups, and she speaks on behalf of the Dyslexia Foundation, an organization that allows her to help those with learning disabilities.
“I don’t want other children to have to go through what I did,” states Blaess. “I want to use the events in my life to make a difference.”
