An Online Achievement Pageant Honoring the Full Figured Woman

Sizes 10+ for 5’5” and under. Sizes 12+ for 5’6” and over

Ms. Pacific Northwest 2008-2009

Kristen Gehrke

Ms. Oregon Classic Beauty Kristen Gehrke was born nearly 35 years ago in ultra-glamorous Palm Springs, California. Her early years were spent collecting rocks, playing in Covington Park in Morongo Valley, California, and exploring the world through a library of books which fed her imagination. During this time, she took one ballet lesson, hardly enough to make her into a graceful, beautiful pageant queen.

Kristen and her family (her mother Judy and grandmother Margaret) moved to Portland, Oregon, the City of Roses, in 1983. She graduated from Parkrose High School where she was active in theater and held positions on the newspaper and yearbook staffs before attending Mt. Hood Community College as a journalism major. Taking time off from college to travel with a Lutheran music ministry team, Kristen jokes that she attended Mt. Hood long enough to have outlasted no less than five college presidents.

After stints at the Northwest Film Center, as a barista in a local coffee shop and as a pub crawl tour guide, Kristen settled into a career in the hospitality industry, currently working in the sales office for an award-winning hotel that plays host to the United States Miss Earth Pageant, the Miss Oregon USA and Miss Oregon Teen USA pageants.

“I didn’t grow up watching pageants,” Kristen says. “It wasn’t a political statement, we just didn’t watch them. And working in the hotel with the pageants has completely changed my view of ‘pageant girls’, a view that was shaped by movies that stereotyped them as gorgeous, but empty.

“I’ve been incredibly impressed with the girls I’ve had the pleasure to meet and to work with. They’re dedicated, they’re intelligent, they care about their platforms. We shouldn’t judge them just because they’re of above-average looks.”

Kristen currently attends Portland State University as a double major in Film Studies and Arts & Letters and intends to use her title to help change the perception of the full-figured woman. “We are beautiful. We matter. We can change the world.”

Kristen is looking forward to wearing her crown and sash as a proud “pageant girl” in the Portland Marathon Mayor’s Walk in early October and is actively recruiting teammates to walk with her.