Rima Fakih


Rima Fakih is a Lebanese-American actress, model, and beauty pageant titleholder who won Miss USA 2010. She represented the state of Michigan in the national pageant, having previously won the 2010 Miss Michigan USA pageant. Fakih is married to music executive, Wassim "Sal" Slaiby and the couple has three children.
In 2018, Fakih became the National Director of Miss Universe Lebanon, the national beauty pageant of Lebanon. She has featured in 100 Most Powerful Women in Arab list in 2011, the same year in which she was a contestant in WWE Tough Enough. In February 2020, she was named ambassador for the year 2020 for The Children’s Cancer Center in Lebanon. Fakih was presented the key to Dearborn, Michigan by the city's mayor John B. O'Reilly Jr. in 2010.

Early life

Fakih was born in Srifa, a small city in the Jabal Amel region of Southern Lebanon, to a Shi'a Muslim family. She is the daughter of Hussein and Nadia Fakih, and has four siblings, brothers Rabih and Rami, and sisters Rana and Rouba. Rima and her three elder siblings were born in Lebanon, but the youngest, Rami was born in New York.
As a young child she lived in the village of Souk El Gharb in Mount Lebanon, and attended St. Rita's, a Catholic school near Beirut.

Immigration to the United States

In 1993, her parents, Hussein and Nadia Fakih, moved their family to New York in order to escape the effects of the Lebanese Civil War.
Fakih attended I.S. 145, Jackson Heights, Queens, New York and St. John's Preparatory School, Astoria, Queens. Her father ran a restaurant in Manhattan. In New York, Fakih's family felt they were subjected to threats and vandalism based on events in the Middle East. Business at her father's restaurant reportedly declined following the September 11, 2001, attacks.
In 2003, her family moved to the large Arab-American community in Dearborn, Michigan.
Fakih resided in Dearborn. She graduated from Henry Ford Community College and went on to earn degrees in economics and business management from the University of Michigan–Dearborn, and announced she planned to attend law school after her year-long reign. Prior to winning the Miss USA title, she worked as a sales associate at the Detroit Medical Center, developing and recruiting in the Arab American community.

Pageants

Fakih competed in her first pageant when she was nineteen, placing fourth runner-up at Miss Wayne County, a preliminary pageant for Miss Michigan in the Miss America system. She also competed in three smaller international pageants.

Miss Lebanon Emigrant

In 2008, Fakih was selected to represent Michigan in the Miss Lebanon Emigrant competition. The event is part of the Miss Lebanon pageant, and is open to young women who are Lebanese or of Lebanese origin, living in countries of the overseas Lebanese community. She placed third in the contest, held August 13 in Batroun, Lebanon, finishing behind Carina El Kaddissi of Brazil and Jessica Kahawaty of Australia.

Miss USA

Fakih won the Miss Michigan USA pageant on September 19, 2009 at the McMorran Place Theater, Port Huron, Michigan. In May 2010 she represented Michigan at the Miss USA 2010 pageant held at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. She won the Miss USA title on May 16, 2010, beating out first runner-up Morgan Woolard of Oklahoma and Samantha Casey of Virginia, breaking a 5-year streak of Southern states winning and becoming the first Miss Michigan USA to win the national title since Kenya Moore in 1993.
Fakih is widely believed to be the first Lebanese American, the first Arab American and the first Muslim to win the Miss USA title; however, pageant officials have stated their records are not detailed enough to confirm this claim. The first Michigan delegate to win the Miss USA title, Carole Gist, became the first African-American Miss USA in 1990.
During and after the Miss USA pageant, Fakih's religious and ethnic identity became the subject of widespread discussion. On the subject of identity, she was quoted as saying "I'd like to say I'm American first, and I am an Arab-American, I am Lebanese-American, and I am Muslim-American."

Many Arab Americans celebrated Fakih's victory, but some Muslims felt she did not properly represent their religion.
Shia scholar Ghazal Omid wrote "To say that she is a Muslim is inaccurate. No Muslim woman can call herself a... Muslim and be on stage with her bikini". Responding to the issue in interviews, Fakih said she and her family are Muslims and respect the religion, but they may not be as strict as many people and do not define themselves by their religion; they view themselves as more "spiritual" than "religious" and appreciate all religions.
Her religion and role in the pageant were further put under the microscope two weeks after being crowned, when photos surfaced of Fakih participating in a "Stripper 101" contest hosted by Detroit radio morning show Mojo in the Morning.
On the subject of the planned Park51 Islamic community center in New York, Fakih stated, "I totally agree with President Obama with the statement on the constitutional rights of freedom of religion. it shouldn't be so close to the World Trade Center. We should be more concerned with the tragedy than religion."

Miss Universe

As the holder of the Miss USA title, Fakih represented the United States in the 2010 Miss Universe pageant, held at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on August 23. She failed to place in the semi-finals. This made her the first representative of her country since 2002's Shauntay Hinton to not place at the pageant.

Other media

Fakih appeared as a guest star on the November 29, 2010, edition of WWE Raw, where she crowned Sheamus, the winner of the King of the Ring tournament. In December 2010 at WWE Tribute to the Troops, she served as the ring announcer for the matches. She later competed on WWE Tough Enough on USA and was eliminated in week four.
Due to conflicting schedules with promotional events for Miss USA 2011, Fakih was the only contestant not to appear on the live final episode. In 2012, she participated in Fox's dating game show The Choice.
She is listed number 86 on AskMen.com's top 99 women 2011 edition. On May 24, 2011, The Roots performed a freestyle song about her during her appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. She also appears in the movie Real Steel, starring Hugh Jackman, which premiered on October 7, 2011. Fakih revealed that she is receiving wrestling training. In 2015, she participated in Netflix's The Apartment season 4, where she became the runner-up behind actress/model/jewelry Designer - Xiao Wang.

Awards and recognition

After her coronation as Miss USA in 2010, Fakih was among the guests at the American Chamber of Commerce conference in Cairo alongside former US President Bill Clinton. She was named the ambassador for The Children’s Cancer Center in Lebanon in February 2020. In January 2010, Fakih received the key to Dearborn which was presented by Mayor John B. O'Reilly Jr.
In April 2016, Fakih converted to Maronite Christianity, in Bkerké, the see of the Maronite Catholic Patriarchate, northeast of Beirut, before her marriage to Lebanese-Canadian music producer Wassim "Sal" Slaiby also known as Sal. Slaiby manages Canadian artist The Weeknd, who went to Lebanon specifically to commemorate the wedding, which took place in the church of Bkerké, the Maronite Patriarchate, on May 15, 2016. The couple has three children, Rima Jr, Joseph and Amira.
In December 2011, Fakih was arrested on charges of misdemeanor drunk driving.