Remember Miss South Carolina who competed in the 2007 Teen USA pageant? If not, chances are her infamous answer will jog your memory and that is exactly why the beauty queen said she contemplated suicide.
Caitlin Upton became one of the finalists in the pageant and really struggled when it came to the question portion of the contest.
"Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map — why do you think this is?" she was asked by Friday Night Lights star Aimee Teegarden.
Upton stammered her answer by uttering these words: “I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh, people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as. I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future [for our children].”
The now-26-year-old recently told New York Magazine that to this day she still cannot rid herself of the embarrassment of that answer. She also admitted that at one point she contemplated committing suicide because of how bad the backlash was.
Today Upton is fashion model. Since her pageant days she has gone brunette and said that what people notice first today is that shares a name with a very well-known supermodel.
“The past few years, going brunette, I have not had any recognition for the Miss Teen USA Pageant at all,” she said. “But I also get recognized for having a similar name to Kate Upton. So I’ll go into my auditions and be like, ‘Yes, yes, I know — I’m the other one.’”