One-armed pageant contestant wins Miss Iowa, heads for Miss America

While not a complete anomaly, disabled women competing at the Miss America pageant is not a common occurrence.

So when Nicole Kelly, 23, took home the crown at the Miss Iowa competition this Saturday, rendering her eligible to compete in Miss America, the news spread like wildfire.

"It was shocking and overwhelming—just like that your life changes," Kelly, who was born without a left forearm, tells CBS 4.

“If you would have told me a year ago that ‘pageant queen’ was in my future, I would have laughed,” she writes on the Iowa pageant website.

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She plans to use her time on stage at the Miss America pageant to discuss the issues people with disabilities face.

“As I grew up, I learned to counterbalance the initial stares I received from people with an outgoing personality that would not give into ‘no,’” she writes. “This means that I tried everything. From baseball, to dance, to diving — there is nothing I would not try."

She graduated from the University of Nebraska in May 2012 with a degree in theatre and finds being on stage an acceptable place for people to stare.

"I found my passion within a world where I was giving people permission to stare: the stage.”

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"It was kind of an outlet for me, a place I could stand up and be myself, and say 'Here I am, and I'm confident in myself,'" she tells CBS 4.

Earlier this year the Miss America pageant made history with its first autistic contestant, Alexis Wineman of Montana.

And last month Russia held its own beauty pageant for disabled women in a wheelchair.