Claws are out after the Maine Lobster Festival dumped its vaping teen Sea Goddess
Drama at this year’s Maine Lobster Festival boiled over.
On Aug. 1, the festival crowned 18-year-old Taylor Hamlin as the 2018 Maine Sea Goddess.
On Aug. 2, Hamlin was no longer the Sea Goddess, the sash gone in a huff of smoke.
An unidentified someone sent old social media pictures of Hamlin, originally posted to a private Instagram account, to festival organizers. One showed her holding a marijuana cigarette; another showed her with a vaping device, the teen queen told People magazine.
What happened next turned into she-said-they-said drama that hung like storm clouds over the five-day seaside celebration of “all things lobster,” which ended Sunday.
Taylor told People and local media that organizers all but forced her to give up her crown. She took the behind-the-scenes drama public in a Facebook post on Thursday in which she urged her supporters to contact organizers.
“I just wanted to let everyone know that the lobster festival committee has taken me down from the sea goddess position due to members of our community emailing pictures of me through out high school,” she wrote.
“Everybody is a teen once in awhile. I’m sorry to whoever didn’t receive the goddess they wanted and felt the need to sabotage this amazing thing that has happened to me.
“You clearly don’t know me well enough or know the real Taylor Hamlin. I am active through out our community, in sports, church, and school.
“If you have negative opinions about their decision you should email them and tell them who I really am, what I stand for. Because I have truly never felt more swept under the rug. I will always be this years sea goddess in my heart and hopefully in all of yours.”
The next day, the festival announced on its Facebook page that Taylor had decided to resign after organizers met with her and her parents about “photos of inappropriate behavior” that were “not in keeping with the behavior and image of the Maine Sea Goddess.”
“Taylor was forthright. She took ownership and responsibility, which we appreciate,” Cynthia Powell, the Maine Lobster Festival president, told WGME in Portland. “The decision (to resign) was made by Taylor.”
Hamlin told the TV station, “It wasn’t like they gave me a choice.”
She told People that she’d dreamed of being Sea Goddess at the 71-year-old festival since she was a little girl.
“I was really upset,” she told People. “It’s been tough. I never thought that this would happen. They told me it was disgusting and they’re disappointed. The whole thing made me feel really terrible about myself.”
She said one organizer told her she could be Sea Goddess for the week and step down later if she kept quiet, a charge organizers have not addressed.
“Why would you make me be a fake Sea Goddess if you don’t want me to represent you in the first place?” Hamlin said to People. “Why would you do this for politics? It was so ridiculous.”
Once the drama became public, battle lines were quickly drawn, with many people protesting the festival’s decision.
Nearly 1,300 comments have been posted to the festival’s Facebook page, where one man wrote: “I’d bet dollars to lobster rolls that 90% of your 1,300 volunteers don’t care one way or the other about the Sea Goddess smoking a joint.”
One local newspaper reported that festival organizers were threatened over what they’d done to the Sea Goddess.
The Sun Journal in Lewiston reported that one organizer was sent photos suggesting their own daughter was being stalked at the festival, while another organizer removed her festival badge over the weekend before she went into a local store so people wouldn’t know she was with the event.
“It’s been almost like a lynch mob,” organizer Celia MacMillan, who opposed the decision to strip Hamlin of her title, told the Sun Journal.
Another organizer told the newspaper extra police were assigned to the festival because of the negative comments organizers were getting.
“Not that I deserve sympathy but today has been one of the worst days of my life,” a clearly anguished Celia Crie Knight, who works on the festival, posted on her Facebook page, where she said she had nothing to do with the decision — and directed angry folks to the coronation committee.
“I have received over 1000 hate messages towards me, my beautiful Mother and the Lobster Festival that I love so much. Just so you all know, I support Taylor Hamlin and her family but what alot of people are saying is devastating to me and cruel to the volunteers, your so called friends.
“We work all year for the lobster industry and my friends. No ones heart is broken more than mine.”
The festival let Hamlin keep the $2,000 scholarship prize money that goes with the Sea Goddess title. She will be attending the University of Maine in the fall, according to the Sun Journal.