Miss New York’s stunning transformation from tomboy to tiara

As a child growing up in Brentwood, Long Island, Miss New York, USA, Briana Siaca could never have imagined a future as a beauty queen.

“Brentwood is made up of scammers and people just trying to survive. You are surrounded by violence, "Siaca told The Post about life as a" painfully shy "young man in the middle of the MS-13-riddled area." I knew all about drugs and gangs at age 10. We couldn't play games. Outside, there were constant cuts and shootings. There is no place to dream. "

Now the 27-year-old, who works as an operations manager for a global investment firm, is ready to compete in the Miss USA pageant, which will air live on FYI at 8 p.m. Monday. Siaca has spent the past six years fighting to win the state contest and get to this point.

"It was really difficult to face defeat every year," said the Long Island City resident, noting that losing was never an option. “I knew that victory was within my reach.

Raised by a single father, an army veterinarian who worked in construction, Siaca was a tomboy who learned how to change a flat tire years before she knew how to apply mascara. "I didn't have that positive female role model growing up," Siaca told The Post just before flying to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the big pageant. "My sister became a teenage mother at 15."

She chose to follow a different path. "I decided in high school that I wanted a better life for myself," she said. Siaca applied to Pace University to study chemistry and was accepted. Her father had to refinance her house to help pay the tuition.

In 2015, her interest in pageants was piqued when she flipped through a school newsletter with a Miss New York, USA “I was lonely and unsure. I wanted to challenge myself with something to help me grow, ”she said. "Something that would make me feel good and do something that would completely terrify me."

Preparing for her debut at the Miss New York USA pageant in 2016 was a transformation, both physically and emotionally. "Growing up, she was not a beautiful girl," said Siaca, who noted that she was always self-conscious about her oversized glasses and her frizzy hair.

"I didn't really know much about makeup or hairstyle and I never went to the gym before contests - it was kind of a crash course before my first contest," she said.

But she came first. "I had no idea what he was doing, but I think they loved that he brought a new energy and innocence."

The platform changed the way she saw herself intellectually: “I never felt like I had a voice. I felt that she suffered in silence, ”she said. "I went from the girl who didn't speak until they spoke to her, to the girl who can't shut up."

She was hooked on the excitement of the competition and would participate every year for six years in a row, always ranking in the top five.

Before her last contest last August, the maximum age for competitors is 27 years old, she realized that her dream of winning hers might not come true. "I was fine with any result and that changed my energy too," she said. “I thought about my community and what I could do with the title. This time, there was a calm in me. "

Miss New York’s stunning transformation from tomboy to tiara

Then, at the Resorts World Catskills hotel in a sea of 160 contestants, she won. "I could not believe it. I started crying, ”she said. The newly crowned queen tearfully dedicated her victory to "the Brentwood girls who do not believe they are worthy of her dreams."