Miss USA inspires other Filipino American pageant winner representing Texas in the Miss America contest

Filipino American Averie Bishop will represent Texas in the Miss America pageant.

With more than a passing interest, another young Filipino American woman watched  R'Bonney Gabriel crowned as Miss USA Oct. 3. Averie Bishop hopes to repeat Gabriel's feat in the Miss America contest.

“Now that I have become the thing that I dreamed of becoming, other young girls, other women from the Filipino community, from the AAPI community can look at me, look at R’Bonney, and think to themselves, I can do it too,” said Bishop, who won the Miss Texas American last June.

It is the first time that a state picked two Filipino American women to represent the state at the United States' two major beauty pageants in the same year.

RELATED: Filipino American wins Miss USA title.

Bishop, 25, is an SMU graduate who also studied law. She was crowned on June 28, and will represent Texas in the coming 85th Miss America pageant to be held in Uncasville, Connecticut in December.

Her motto for her run for Miss Texas was “Y'all Means All,” which emphasizes diversity and inclusion. "Texas can look like me, and it can look like you," Bishop said. 

“I was quite literally the only student that looks like the way that I did for almost, I'd say, a decade,” Bishop told NBC. “I convinced myself that I wasn't allowed to speak my voice, that I wasn't allowed to dream or pursue the things I wanted to pursue.”

As Miss Texas, she told Insider that she plans to use her platform to promote diversity and inclusion initiatives. She has more 65,000-plus followers on Instagram and 809,000-plus followers on TikTok.

With her mother, Bishop manages a nonprofit called the Tulong Foundation that provides scholarships and mentorship to girls in Southeast Asia to help them pursue an education. It currently sponsors more than 45 children in the Philippines.

Another trait that Bishop shares with Miss USA R'Bonney Gabriel is her upfront  opinions on controversial issues usually avoided by pageant winners.

The selection of both Bishop and Gabriel in their respective beauty pageants is symbolic of the changes that is occurring in Texas, a state where minority populations make up more than 50% of the state's population.

In recent years, Texas' conservative lawmakers, who still retain political power, have been passing controversial laws, including some of the most restrictive voting laws in the country, anti-abortion laws, book bans and the redrawing of legislative districts that took power away from minority voters.

In one Tik Tok video, Bishop applauds the bipartisanship behind President Biden's infrastructure plan in the "Build Back Better" bill. In another, she tells her mother's immigration story.

Many of Averie Bishop's Tik Tok videos were taped in the SMU law librrary.

Bishop said she won Miss Texas America before a politically-conservative judges panel. During initial meetings with the Miss Texas America board, Bishop was expecting resistance. Instead, she found that they trusted her.

" Her training in law school helped Bishop navigate the difficult interviews, she said. In law school, Bishop worked in a legal clinic where she represented children and victims of domestic abuse where she worked with people who may not "have never seen a person of color their entire life," Bishop told Insider.

During her reign as Miss Texas, she will be visiting the state's public schools where she intends to deliver her message of diversity. "Many of us have grown up in silos without ever having walked out of our small town to consider different perspectives. When we bring other perspectives in, we become a more fruitful, more colorful and more vibrant community together."

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