Miss Tidewater Brittany Lietz, skin cancer survivor and nursing student, was crowned Miss Maryland on Saturday night. Lietz, diagnosed with skin cancer at the age of 20, has been using her celebrity position as a beauty pageant winner as a platform for raising awareness of the dangers associated with too much sun exposure. She speaks to high school students at their schools and attends booths at health fairs to warn others her age that the cost of a golden glow is too high a price to pay when you put yourself in harm's way. She has a white scar running across the back of her right rib cage, and she has had 20 other moles removed since she was first diagnosed with melanoma. These days, she uses self-tanning sprays to achieve the look of a tan because a tan is still an asset when you compete in beauty pageants. A pump-spray tan is as close as she wants to be to the sun.
"To me, being tan is not worth losing my life over," she said. "I'm going to be pale and that's who I am." Lietz plans to use her personal experience as a skin cancer survivor, the visible physical scars she has from skin cancer surgery and her new celebrity status as Miss Maryland -- and possibly as Miss America -- to continue raising awareness about skin cancer.
You can watch Baltimore's WJZ-TV Healthwatch reporter Kellye Lynn's television news story featuring Lietz's battle with skin cancer here at the Video Library Healthwatch: Hopkins Scientists Develop New Tool To Fight Melanoma.
