The newly crowned Miss USA 2016 Deshauna Barber has won millions of hearts with her bold and confident answer. The answer that she delivered that night, not only won her the coveted crown of Miss USA, but also won her applause from the masses and respect from women all around. Barber with her unconventional background and non traditional looks has inspired response from women, especially Afro-Americans.

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“I was actually very shocked at that. Cause there were a lot of girls that messaged me, a lot of girls that have reached out to me on my social media accounts, that were saying, ‘Oh my gosh I’m a dark-skinned, chocolate woman and I’m so excited that you’re Miss USA,’” Barber told MSNBC on Thursday. “And I think it’s really sad because it goes to show that we really do live in a world where darker women such as myself feel as though we’re not pretty based on what we see on the television. And that’s really unfortunate because beauty comes in all shades.”, shared Deshauna during one of her media tours.

Barber expressed that she is glad that she has been able to inspire other women. She also shared that many of them had even informed her that they plan to get into beauty pageants now because of her. “If we look at the race of women who have won [Miss USA] over the past 20 years, every year is different … it just shows how diverse they want their representatives to be,” she said. “I’m glad that they thought I would be a good Miss USA and I want to inspire women my color, all types of women with [different] economic backgrounds, different religious backgrounds, women from all over this country to consider pageants, and even if its not pageants, to chase their dreams and never think that how you look is a reason you can’t achieve that dream.”, says Barber.

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Deshauna is the Logistics Commander for the 988th Quartermaster Detachment Unit at Fort Meade. Deshauna Barber joined the military at the age of 17, following a family tradition. Hence, beauty pageant was like the farthest thing she ever thought of. But now that the beauty queen will be representing USA at the Miss Universe 2016 pageant, she wants to use the platform to raise awareness about the plight of veterans in this country.

“We have a lot of these situations where these veterans who come back from deployment and they’re fighting mental battles that no one sees,” she said. “It’s important for our families and the friends of these veterans to pay attention because they’re only required a certain amount of hours of counseling after deployment, and for some soldiers that’s just not enough because not every soldier has the same experience when they are overseas. Some people are in combat a little bit more than others so it’s incredibly important that we catch those signs, when they’re acting a little bit weird we go and call their chain of command, we call their commander.”

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The beauty queen is currently enjoying her reign as the Miss USA and is busy attending various press meets and events.