NYC mom challenges ban on mothers in top beauty pageants: ‘Being a parent is not a crime’

It’s the mother of all insults.

The Miss America and Miss World pageants ban either some or all moms from their competitions — but a New Yorker with a 6-year-old boy hopes to change that.

Danielle Hazel, along with her famous women’s rights lawyer, Gloria Allred, revealed Monday that she has filed a discrimination complaint against the pageants with the city’s Commission on Human Rights.

“Being pregnant or being a parent is not a crime,” Allred said.

The legal challenge from Hazel, a 25-year-old mom from Brooklyn, says the Miss America pageant only allows female contestants with “no legal dependents,” while Miss World participants must be “unmarried, have no children, and are not pregnant.”

Stuart Moskovitz, a lawyer for the Miss America pageant, insisted to The Post on Monday, “There is no ban on mothers” — only on those with legal custodianship of their children.

“The only ban is where it’s necessary to protect the welfare of the child,” Moskovitz said, claiming that Miss America works “365 days a year” and is busier than the president of the United States.

So unlike the US military, where single moms are allowed to serve and deploy as long as they have a “family care plan,” the grueling Miss America pageant does not allow for such accommodation, even if willing and able caretakers are available to help with childcare.

“If you have a legal dependent, you have to take care of the legal dependent,” Moskovitz said. “Any woman that puts competing in this contest above the welfare of her child, well, she’s not a Miss America anyway.”

Even if there is “shared custody, then that child is jeopardized,” the lawyer said if such moms were to compete.

Hazel said her dream since she was a child was to compete in a major pageant and that she was “devastated when I later learned that having my son disqualified me from competing.”

That sense of injustice wasn’t lost on her young son Zion, who told his mom that the rules were “stupid” she said.

“I do not want myself and other women to be held back by these discriminatory entry rules,” Hazel said. “I also want to show everyone that mothers can also be philanthropists, advocates, and beauty queens.”

Allred added, “We are seeking an end to the discriminatory requirement of both pageants which we believe denies and excludes Danielle and other mothers from an important business and cultural opportunity simply because of their status as parents.”

The complaint was announced next to the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument on the Central Park Mall in Manhattan.

Joining Hazel in announcing her legal challenge Monday was Veronika Didusenko, who was crowned Miss Ukraine in 2018 but lost the title once officials from Miss World discovered she had a child.

“One of the judges at the Miss Ukraine pageant pointed at me live on air and said, ‘She had a child at the age of 19 and then divorced. I think it’s wrong to make such person a role model,’ ” Didusenko recounted Monday.

Didusenko is now a crusader for mothers in the beauty pageant world.

Allred has already racked up a win for moms on the West Coast when she fought a similar rule on behalf of a California mother, Andrea Quiroga, who was blocked from entering the Miss California pageant because of her motherhood. A settlement led to the elimination of the pageant’s 70-year ban on mothers.

For this new suit, Allred and Hazel are taking dead aim at the two remaining major pageants to help the next generation of mothers avoid discrimination with a hope for a similar outcome.

“None of these things change unless we challenge them,” Allred said.

A rep for the Miss World pageant did not respond to a Post request for comment.