PHOTOS 2013 Miss America Mallory Hagan swimsuit, evening gown, talent, and crowning

There she is, Miss America
There she is, your ideal
With so many beauties she took the town by storm
With her all-American face and form…

Introducing your 2013 Miss America Mallory Hagan! The 23-year-old former Miss New York beat out 52 other beautiful ladies from around the nation to take home the top honors and a $50,000 scholarship (which is almost a full year at most private universities!) in last night’s competition held at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas last night.

Hagan, who now lives in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn after relocating to New York City from Alabama in 2008, performed a tap dance routine for the talent portion of the competition and answered this question about gun control (asked by Good Morning America‘s Sam Champion) in the interview portion:

Sam Champion: In the wake of the Newtown tragedy there has been a lot of talk about gun control. One solution being proposed is an armed guard in every school. Do you think that would make our schools safer?

Mallory Hagan: I don’t think the proper way to fight violence is with violence. I think the proper way is to educate people on guns and the ways we can use them properly. We can lock them up, we can have gun safety classes, we can have a longer waiting period.

For the swimsuit competition, Mallory Hagan wore a black bikini with gold embellishments:

In the preliminary competition, Hagan competed in the evening wear competition wearing a one-shouldered form-fitting full-length white gown with her blonde hair pulled back tightly:

As mentioned above, Mallory did a tap dance routine for her talent, and for her performance she wore some shiny black dance pants with matching midriff-exposing long-sleeve jacket in addition to lots of sass!

Mallory Hagan beat out first runner-up Miss South Carolina Ali Rogers and second runner-up Miss Oklahoma Alicia Clifton for the title, taking the reigns from 2012 Miss America Laura Kaeppeler. Her platform was stopping child sexual abuse.

Hagan is the first Miss New York to win the Miss America crown since Vanessa Williams in 1984. (Williams would lose her title 10 months later after a nude photo scandal.)

Congratulations to Mallory Hagan!

Here she is at the press conference after being named Miss America 2013: