It feels like it was just yesterday (probably because that’s the last time we pumped the pickle to them), but it’s been 28 years since Vanessa Williams gave up her Miss America crown. For all you young’uns out there, Vanessa was not always a TV actress. She started her career as a beauty queen, and in September 1983 she was voted the first African-American Miss America in the history of the pageant. But her reign as America’s Sweetheart was short-lived, and on July 23, 1984 she was stripped of her crown after pics of Vanessa posing solo and Sapphically stripping off with another model were published in Penthouse. This was, of course, long before it became de rigeur for every up-and-coming starlet with a taste for fame to “leak” her own sex tape (we’re looking at you, Kim Kardashian ), and the nude pics were truly shocking at the time…shocking to the tune of $14 million in magazine sales. See the pics that cost Vanessa Williams the crown after the jump!
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This Day in Skinstory: Vanessa Williams Resigns as Miss America, July 23, 1984 [PICS]
