August 25, 2003 09:02am
NFL Cheerleader Fired for Winning Modeling Contest
Source: Mystique Magazine
by: Company Press Release
(AUSTIN, TX) -- A "fabulous female" she is no longer. Former beauty queen and Bay area native Danielle Gamba, 20, has been fired from her job as an Oakland Raiderette cheerleader when nude photos were discovered on the internet. Last week, her cheerleading coordinator discovered Gamba had won a Mystique Magazine international model search this past June in Belize, and did not approve. Gamba also appears in the official 2004 Oakland Raiderette calendar.
In January 2003, Gamba was surfing the internet and stumbled upon Mystique Magazine's Fifth Anniversary Model Search. She sent in some fully clothed snapshots a friend had taken of her. To her surprise, she was notified in April that she had been voted by Mystique Magazine fans into the top 20, ahead of 2,000 other contestants. She had won a free trip with 19 other finalists to Belize, Central America to compete for $10,000 and a shoot with Mystique Magazine.
With a unique freckled girl-next-door look, most of her fellow contestants instantly pegged her as the one to beat. After several days of test shoots and other fun activities, Gamba ended up be named first runner-up, and was whisked off from Belize to Honduras for a week of official photo shoots for Mystique Magazine (she has another shoot scheduled with Mystique Magazine in Fiji in late September).
Mystique's event was hugely popular in Belize and among all the contestants, many who said they had the best time of their lives. Even the San Pedro Sun (Belize) wrote in a June 19th article, "Mystique Magazine's annual event brought beauty and prosperity to Ambergris Caye. Mystique Magazine is indeed a 'first-class production!'"
So it's no wonder Gamba is perplexed. "I worked hard to make the Raiderettes and was looking forward to the season," says Gamba. "I'm not sure why they had a problem. There have been other Raiderettes in the past who posed sexy for various magazines and didn't get fired. I would understand if it was pornography or something, but Mystique Magazine definitely is not. I'm proud of my pictures -- I mean, they are not even as revealing as something you'd see in Playboy."
Some of the pictures that led to Gamba's being fired are featured this week at Mystique Magazine dot com [linked in the box to the right].
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