The Miss America Organization CEO, Sam Haskell, has been suspended over leaked emails that mocked pageant contestants.
In a statement, the organisation said it would be conducting “an in-depth investigation into alleged inappropriate communications [by Mr Haskell]”.
The emails reportedly include vulgar references to past winners and comments about their sex lives.
Former contestants have criticised the “appalling” revelations.
Publishing its statement on Twitter, the Miss America Organization said Mr Haskell had agreed to the suspension.
The Huffington Post published the alleged contents of three years of emails between Mr Haskell and other pageant officials.
The internal emails, which the BBC has not seen, are reported to have included name-calling, slut-shaming and fat-shaming of some of the contestants who had taken part in the pageant.
The revelations caused Dick Clark Productions, their television sponsor, to cut ties with the long-standing pageant.
Dick Clark Productions said in a statement on Friday they had been made aware of the emails “several months ago” and were “appalled by their unacceptable content”.
A former Miss America winner, Mallory Hagan, who was mocked in some of the emails said she “wasn’t shocked, but [felt] validated by the emails”.
“For the longest time, I’ve tried to explain to people around me that this is happening or these things are being said,” the winner of the 2013 pageant told NBC.
In an statement to the BBC before Mr Haskell’s suspension, the Miss America Organization said that Mr Haskell, who earns $500,000 per year, was at the time “under unreasonable distress resulting from intense attacks on his family from disgruntled stakeholders”.
The investigation that the organisation has launched in light of Mr Haskell’s suspension will “look into the nature in which [the emails] were obtained”, which the organisation had previously said were “strictly intended for private communication” and were “illegally procured”.
