One of them is Kylie Chang. She grips the hand of Miss Sunset USA, a fellow Asian American contender, and in that touch passes a silent, seismic understanding: whatever happens next, the narrative has already shifted. The old guard has fallen. Then, the name. Not a name from the established playbook of what a beauty queen should sound like, but her name. “Kylie Chang.” The sound is a punctuation mark, a period at the end of a 74-year-long sentence. The first East Asian woman to ever win the title. The crowd erupts. And Kylie, the picture of composure just a second before, dissolves into happy, disbelieving tears. The baby giraffe, as her dance coach once affectionately called her for her tall, lanky, uncoordinated grace, had not only found her footing…
