Miss USA hopeful says she was offered the crown for a blow-job.

Ashleigh Blake wanted to be Miss USA.

Well – not just Miss USA. Ashleigh had a plan. Miss USA was to be a stepping stone to making it big in Hollywood. Not just regular big, either – Angelina Jolie big. She wanted to be on Glee. She wanted to sing, dance, model and act and she wanted everyone to know her name (Fame!).

Ashleigh had her resume on a casting networking site called GotCast with her amateur modelling pics. And one day, she got a message from a recruitment associate for Miss California USA, asking if she wanted to schedule a meeting.

Of course she wanted to. Which aspiring Hollywood star would say no to a pageant? Yeah, the beauty pageant industry gets a bad rap. Any industry that promotes dressing three-year-olds like Vegas showgirls is, understandably, going to get slammed for it.

But there is no denying that winning a beauty pageant will guarantee you fame, fortune and All That Jazz. If successful in the Miss California pageant, Ashleigh could potentially go on to the Miss USA pageant; and from there, the Miss Universe pageant.

Unfortunately, Ashleigh didn’t make it to any of those levels. Because she wouldn’t agree to give sexual favours in return for guaranteed progress through the rounds of the pageant world.

Ashleigh is now suing the Miss Universe Organisation (owned by Donald Trump, the Organisation covers the state pageants, Miss USA and Miss Universe) over the recruitment associate for Miss California who originally contacted her.

The basis of the case is the allegation that the agent asked Ashleigh for a blow job, in order to progress her modelling career.

The name of the recruitment associate was Domingo Rodriguez. He invited Ashleigh, and a bunch of other pageant hopefuls, to an interview session. In the interview, Rodriguez told Ashleigh that he would be able to help her find sponsors to pay the pageant’s non-refundable deposit fee of $895. He also offered to help her to “the next level”, sending her emails and telling her to contact him on his mobile.

Ashleigh was excited about the opportunity but was also smart enough to be a tad wary. According to Jezebel, she then rang the pageant organisers and confirmed with them that Rodriguez was an official employee of the company.

Feeling like everything was above-board and legit, Ashleigh then followed Rodriguez’s instructions to email him modelling photographs. She confirmed when she wrote to him that she wasn’t up for super racy-type photo shoots, although a bit of ‘implied’ nudity; would be okay.

Wanting to do well and get ahead in the industry, Ashleigh then followed up her early correspondence with these text messages to Rodriguez:

From there, Ashleigh agreed to meet with Rodriguez at a Starbucks. When she arrived, he asked Ashleigh to get in his car.

She was hesitant, but she did it anyway, despite the fact that he’d arrived without paperwork or anything official.

And that’s when Rodriguez told her that their agreement would be oral:

“Basically, I had to give him head and other ‘sexual favors’ if I wanted to be on the cover of the magazine,” Ashleigh said. Rodriguez explained that this was simply the “fast track” that 90% of all successful actors and models took to the top: if she performed additional sexual favors for the powerful men on the modeling circuit, her path to fame would be guaranteed.

Ashleigh said Rodriguez asked her to “prove herself” right there in the Starbucks parking lot. When she looked upset, he let her out of the car and told her to think it over. Instead, she spoke with an officer at the Tracy Police Department the very next day. But because Rodriguez hadn’t actually forced her to go down on him, the incident was a civil matter, not a criminal one.

From there, Ashleigh contacted the state director for Miss California USA to share her experience. While the director, Keith Lewis, agreed to “relieve Rodriguez of his recruiting responsibilities”, he told Ashleigh that nothing further could be done to remedy the situation. He also encouraged her to keep her story under wraps, and to still apply for the pageant.

Ugh.

Jezebel also spoke to Rodriguez, who admitted that he’d met Ashleigh, but denied personally requesting a blowjob. He did, however, admit to telling Ashleigh about a magazine where women exchanged sexual favours for cover photos, and said that he’d offered the same option to other women… at least one of whom had taken him up on it.

There’s so much more to the story. So many more instances of recruitment agents who are actually scam artists, with long histories of making false promises and manipulating clients who are all-too-keen. And Ashleigh’s hoping to expose that the Miss Universe Organisation knowingly hires these scam artists.

For too long, the focus has been on the scandals at the forefront of these pageants. The beauty queens that are unable to find America on a world map, or give a straightforward response to a question about the gender pay gap.

The Miss USAs who are accused of drug abuse and drink driving. The contestants who accidentally let some super-racy photos slip, or are revealed to be porn stars.

But it’s time that we start looking at behind-the-scenes. Past the spray tans, the bedazzled bras and the bizarre national costumes. Past the fact that ratings for the pageants are ridiculous – Trump reckons that the last Miss Universe pageant had 1 billion viewers across 190 countries.

Because none of this is okay. None of it.

We weren’t surprised that this happens, were you? Have you ever been asked for sexual favours to further career?  Or have you been given the impression that this would help your career progression?