Two beauty queens, Mia Kopp and Mulanie Flowers, will be representing Kentucky at the annual Miss International Queen – USA (MIQ-USA). The pageant celebrates transgender women and highlights their glamour, history and pride within their community. 

After initially debuting in Las Vegas, MIQ-USA was described by Vegas 411 Review as “the new crown jewel in Las Vegas shows.” The pageant was then moved to Atlantic City, where it will spotlight the beauty of transgender women from across the United States. Next year, the competition will take place from March 26-27, 2026, in Atlantic City. 

Originally founded in 2004 in Thailand, MQI-USA aims to “create equal[ity] and acceptance in society” and “raise the standard of Transgender girl contest[s] to be accepted by the general public,” according to their website. 

The festivities include a press conference where the contestants are introduced, a state costume competition, a talent competition, and leadership and personal growth workshops. The final night will consist of swimsuit and evening gown competitions, finally ending in an interview highlighting the intelligence and charisma of the competitors. The final evening will be hosted by transgender icon Mimi Marks and National Director of MIQ-USA Todd Montgomery. 

Midori Monet, the winner of last year’s Miss International Queen pageant, will be in attendance at MIQ-USA. She is the third winner from the United States to win the international title, and she will pass her crown to the next winner of MIQ-USA at the end of the festivities.

The pageant aims to celebrate transgender women, while also providing positive support and awareness. In a time where the transgender community is consistently attacked by the media, the competition is a safe haven for transgender women to represent themselves. 

Mia Kopp highlights mental health advocacy on a national level

Mia Kopp is one of the competitors from Kentucky. She was born in France, moved to Mexico and now resides in Kentucky, working as a transportation manager at UPS. She chose to participate in the pageant because of its platform for hope and empowerment in the transgender community. 

“It’s a platform of hope and giving everybody in our community a voice. A voice of empowerment, a voice of all these hopes and dreams that people sometimes give up on and Miss International Queen USA is that,” Kopp told Queer Kentucky. “It’s that hope. It’s that equity. It’s that promotion of human rights and that was my inspiration.”

Kopp is also an avid advocate for mental health. She had struggled with depression and anxiety and she wants others in the transgender community to know that they “are not alone.” By providing more resources and reassurance, she states that when humans heal themselves, they also heal their souls. Mental health resources are important for prioritizing the safety of transgender people and she hopes to use her platform to raise more awareness.

“When you know your value, when you know your power, that makes you see that success in your life. That gives you the meaning and purpose of yourself around people, or around your friends and your family,” said Kopp. “That’s how I want to show myself to people and it’s how I love myself as well.”

She also volunteers with the Louisville Pride Foundation and hosts weekly trans haven discussions. These discussions play a vital role in her mental health advocacy work, as she states that these spaces are integral to the protection of the community of transgender people.

“I just volunteer because that’s the way that I can commit my brain and my body and my soul to things that made me leave that dark space that I was living,” said Kopp. 

Poetry from Mulanie Flowers takes center stage 

Poet Mulanie Flowers will also be representing Kentucky at MIQ-USA. Originally from Liberia, Flowers immigrated to the US at the age of 2. She participated in a variety of extracurricular activities in school, such as cheerleading, chess and debate. Now, she is a poet and competing for the title of Miss International Queen.

After an experience with the ballroom culture of Chicago, Flowers began performing drag and was introduced to the MIQ pageant. She was introduced to the competition through a mutual friend and allowed herself to feel more confident within he pageant. 

“It’s a pageant for trans women, like us. It just basically puts us [trans women] out there, gets our stories out there,” said Flowers. “It just shows us to the world in a different light. I was like ‘that’s such an amazing opportunity.’”

Flowers has also been writing poetry since the age of 10. As she has grown up in the church, she has allowed herself to express her feelings in her free time. As she has explored other art forms, she continued to be drawn back to the power of words within poetry. If she were to win the title of Miss International Queen USA, she hopes to use her platform to create a book of poetry highlighting transgender voices. 

Her poem, “Her,” is about seeing herself transition and was the first poem she ever performed. She states that the piece is about “saying goodbye to the boy and saying hello to the woman I knew I was going to be.”

The competition allowed her to build her confidence and to showcase herself in new ways, not only for her, but her other sisters in the competition, including Mia Kopp.

“I feel like a lot of times trans people are misunderstood because people don’t understand them, they feel like everything should be under this one category, in this one umbrella, but there’s so so many different ways to be the person that you are,” said Flowers. “So I just hope that everybody just from this entire experience, this entire journey, watching me, they just see that ‘she’s just a girl’ and ‘I’m just a girl’ and that we’re all just normal people trying to co-exist.”

Mia Kopp and Mulanie Flowers will both be representing Kentucky in Atlantic City, New Jersey, from March 26-27, 2026, at The Concert Venue at Harrah’s.

Click here for tickets and more information about the pageant.