Being Miss America: Behind the Rhinestone Curtain (Discovering America) (25 page)

A few years after I give up the crown, I find myself in this peculiar position with regard to the Miss America Organization. Fortunately, I have the same belated recognition of kinship that I remember from my isolated year on the road. I realize that there’s already an existing network of women who probably care as much as I do, who innately understand the frustration I’m feeling, and who are most likely also trying to figure out how they can help
.

For the first time—outside of the usual chitchat and pageant festivities that we share each time we return to Atlantic City, the Miss Americas get together with a different purpose in mind
.

Because we’re scattered all over the country, we have to communicate virtually, and it doesn’t happen overnight. I’ve started copying and pasting the annual contact information e-mail into a Word document, thinking it will be easier for everyone to find if we need it. Just like that, everyone’s
e-mail address is in one “to” box, and we begin to discuss what is happening with—and to—our program
.

I say “our” program not because the Miss Americas own it. We don’t. No one owns it, really; it has been created and sustained by a massive effort from hundreds of thousands of people, over the course of nearly a century. But just as those of us who have worn the crown have found ourselves becoming symbols—and, for that matter, targets—the minute the crown perches on our respective heads, we have also been granted a kind of clout that isn’t available to everyone who loves Miss America. It is my belief that it’s time we get together and put that clout to use
.

Miss America has always had outspoken renegades. It is, of course, easier to dismiss one vocal ex–beauty queen than it is to marginalize an entire collective of intelligent, savvy women. Via e-mail, we learn that we have plenty of common concerns. And we make a plan—followed by an appointment—to go to Atlantic City for an audience with the board of directors
.

Over the course of weeks, we plan our strategy. A small group of us happens to live in Manhattan, and we take the lead in formulating an approach too compelling for the powers that be to ignore. Susan Powell (1981) has experienced frustration with sponsorship opportunities; she relates the story of meeting some Betty Crocker executives who’d been dying to get involved with Miss America, and trying to explain to them later why the pageant seems to have no interest in bringing them (and their money) on board. “That’s just the way they do things” may be true—I’m willing to bet that more phone calls have gone unreturned in that office than at all the other nonprofits in New Jersey put together—but it’s still embarrassing. And once a Miss America (or a volunteer or a fan) gets egg on her face a couple times, she stops calling in favors. But sponsorships are something we know we can pull together, if the MAO leadership agrees to handle them properly
.

Debbye Turner (1990), Gretchen Carlson (1989), Susan, and I get together more than once at Gretchen’s Upper West Side apartment. At this point, Gretchen and Debbye both work at CBS; they know their way around media. Debbye, as the first Miss America in the era of official platform issues, intimately understands the challenges of using substance to gain credibility. Gretchen’s husband, Casey, is a successful sports agent, and his company, IMG, has serious power when it comes to branding. And I have a good relationship with one of the most successful publicists in New York, whose wheelhouse is the intersection of politics, philanthropy, and entertainment. And who just happens to be a closet Miss America fan
.

With input from the non–New York Miss America contingent, we craft a presentation. We pile into a car and head down the Garden State Parkway. We stride into the offices at the Sheraton—past the bronze statue of Bert Parks that sings “There She Is” when you stand under the crown between his outstretched arms. Around the corner in the lobby. Through the rotunda, where replicas of past Miss Americas’ winning gowns beckon from their glass displays and a giant TV screen replays decades of crowning moments in a never-ending loop
.

We’re pretty sure we’re going to kick ass
.

Passing through the heavy oak doors, we meet Heather Whitestone (1995) and Evelyn Ay (1954), both of whom have traveled to join us. We wait in the inner lobby, surrounded by oil paintings; each of our official headshots has been painstakingly transferred onto canvas and rests in a wooden frame. If it were your first trip to the Miss America offices, you would look around and think, “Wow. These people really love their Miss Americas.”

Unless you’re one of those Miss Americas, and you want to help make changes. In that case, things go south pretty quickly
.

The meeting gets off to a rocky start. We sit in a line along
one side of the conference table, with the board members occupying the rest. The chairman at the time, a guy named Steve Fuhs, quickly launches into a history lesson about the Miss America Organization. Debbye politely but firmly interrupts, rattling off some key moments in the pageant’s evolution: first scholarships awarded, first talent competition. We’re not here to be lectured about what Miss America is. We’ve lived it more completely than anyone else at this table—even the longtime volunteers. We’re here to make a real pitch about how the pageant can use its built-in resources to save itself
.

We tell the board members what we can offer them—sponsors, media contacts, turnaround specialists. We will call in our favors. We will mobilize other Miss Americas, most of whom are already fired up. Evelyn gets choked up. Heather cries. It’s pretty moving
.

And we tell them the only thing we want in return: board representation. It’s just stupid that Miss Americas—we who are living, breathing resources with significant experience, energy, and passion—are so underutilized. We don’t want to take over. But we also don’t want to hang around on the sidelines, waiting to be trotted across the stage once a year. We don’t want to simply sign autographs, shake some VIP hands, and then be put back in cold storage for the year. We want to do more than look pretty and sit in the corner while the grown-ups talk. This, and the expectation that the office get its act together and start behaving professionally, is all we ask in return for everything we feel we have to offer
.

The meeting ends like this: One of the board members, a small man with a lot of gel in his dark hair, thanks us for our time. He tells us to go ahead and start bringing in the sponsors, and they’ll let us know what they decide about the rest of it. And that, as they say, is that
.

It is the first time Miss America really breaks my heart. It will not be the last
.

It’s not a total loss, to be sure—we do succeed in getting board representation. Two seats, to be exact. Later, three. Somewhat predictably, none of us who attended that meeting is among those chosen. If you speak up, you’re a threat. If you’re not easily managed, it’s better for you to be neutralized. You may have ideas and possibilities and excitement burning a hole in your brain, but it’s safer for the status quo if you are simply one of many in an evening gown, voicelessly waving from the stage annually as your name and year are announced. After all, the logic goes, you get to come to the pageant every year; it’s the one place in the world where you are famous. People know you by your first name. They may whisper, once you turn your back, about how you’ve aged or the weight you’ve gained, but they are overjoyed when they first spot you among the crowd. And to many of the decision makers, it seems as if that should be enough to satisfy you. If it’s not, too bad. But thanks for playing
.

Eventually, one of our little gang actually will be invited onto the board. Gretchen, who has advanced from a CBS substitute anchor to the host of
Fox and Friends,
gets the call
.

In hindsight, I understand the reasoning behind the board’s lackluster response to our proposals. At the time, it was a seriously divided body. A single vote could swing the axis of power entirely in one direction or another. I see the writing on the wall pretty soon after the meeting, actually; within a week or two after we make our presentation, the Miss America Organization hires a new PR firm. It’s not the publicist I’ve offered, who represents the breed of Hollywood stars who are so recognizable that they have to hide from their fame. They never even ask for a meeting with him. MAO’s new press representatives are based in Egg Harbor City, New Jersey
.

After the 2004 pageant, Steve Fuhs and the newest acting CEO, Art McMaster, get busy making some big changes. McMaster is the organization’s former comptroller, who has
been on the staff since 1999 and presided over the complete collapse of Miss America’s finances. Presumably, he has been promoted to the top job simply because he was the only middle-aged white man in the office left standing; it’s hard to imagine that his leadership skills or executive experience is at all compelling. Eventually, he will be made full-time CEO. On more than one occasion, he will ask people to shelve legitimate concerns so that they don’t go down in history as the person who killed Miss America. Regardless of the validity of their grievances, this tactic is a winner when deployed effectively. If your love for the pageant outweighs your desire to collect your scholarship money, for example, you are likely to quietly abandon that pursuit
.

An example: Shortly after our meeting, Fuhs and McMaster go to a meeting of the Atlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority (ACCVA) and beg out of the pageant’s contract. Those who are there report that it’s a bit of a guilt trip; MAO has gotten itself into such a dire situation that it can no longer afford to put on the pageant in Atlantic City. Like so many others, the ACCVA doesn’t want to be responsible for killing Miss America. But neither does it want to “give them a site fee and pay all the costs and put a million dollars in their pocket,” ACCVA executive director Jeffrey Vassar tells the
New York Times.
They release the pageant from its obligations, on the condition that “Miss America must continue to appear ten times a year on behalf of the visitors’ bureau for the next five years.”

Miss America announces that the pageant will move to Las Vegas, and be televised by Country Music Television in January, rather than in September, as has been traditional. Though the arrangement does decent business for CMT, it lasts for only two years. Sure, Miss America has a heartland appeal that works for much of CMT’s audience base, but ultimately the two just aren’t compatible enough. CMT says good-bye
.

The pageant moves to The Learning Channel, where it
lives for three years. TLC is known for its reality shows, and this is where the whole thing gets really hard to watch. In the first year, TLC creates a multi-episode reality show designed to introduce the contestants to the audience over a longer period than one night. It’s an interesting idea, but in practice it doesn’t quite work. The contestants arrive for the first episode and are instructed to put on full pageant gear: evening gowns, heels, stage makeup. Then they stand on bleachers for several hours while Stacy and Clinton, the hosts of
What Not to Wear,
go through their suitcases and critique their clothes. That year’s eventual winner, Kirsten Haglund (2008), doesn’t really participate much in the quest for camera time; for the majority of episodes, she simply watches and occasionally comments
.

TLC learns from this. The next year (2009), the state title holders spend about a month in Los Angeles filming a new and improved reality show. They actually live on the
Queen Mary
cruise ship for the duration of the shoot. This one involves challenges that have nothing to do with the actual job of Miss America—running obstacle courses, designing a dress from a piece of black fabric, “working it” on the catwalk. Their participation is encouraged, even practically mandated, by the “golden sashes” awarded to the challenge winners; the women who end up with these sashes will be entered into an audience contest to become the “people’s choice” semifinalists at Miss America. Meaning that regardless of how they perform in the preliminary competitions, they may make it to the top fifteen on the basis of how well they glue feathers onto cloth with a timer ticking in the background
.

There are also reportedly plenty of moments in these long, long days (often going from six a.m. until midnight, with
not one penny
of pay—which frankly doesn’t even sound legal) during which the producers try to set up conflict between the women. After the first few days, the contestants revolt and demand a meeting where they can voice their concerns.
They refuse to be part of a show that is constantly trying to pit them against one another (“Miss West Virginia says she’s against gay marriage! You’re in favor of gay marriage; what do you think of her?!?”) The producers relent; the Miss America executives profess ignorance and horror that these things are going on at all
.

The end result is that when the contestants go home after this experience, more than a handful of them wonder how they can possibly look little girls in the eye and encourage them to compete for Miss America when they grow up. For women who have spent years, in some cases, trying to get to this point, that’s a remarkable change in perspective
.

Here’s the thing: I’m not opposed to reality shows in the slightest. They can be fun. I watch them. But what bothers me is that these women did not sign up for this. If you’re on
The Bachelor,
or
Wipeout,
or
Survivor,
it’s because you went through a long and usually arduous application process to get there. These women signed up to compete for the title of Miss America. They didn’t sign up for a reality show
.

And the other problem with the reality-show approach, aside from the fact that it cheapens the whole event, is that these women are not good television. Not in the
Real Housewives
way, anyway. Even the least-experienced ones have been somewhat groomed to appear diplomatic, thoughtful, intelligent, passionate about community service. If I had a dollar for every Miss State who was likely to go on national television and thoughtlessly talk trash about another contestant (much less flip over a table or start a food fight), I would never, ever have any dollars. There’s a code of etiquette that’s been present at Miss America ever since Lenora Slaughter gathered the wives of Atlantic City’s most prominent gentlemen and turned them into the Hostess Committee. There may be bitchiness, sure, but it’s covered and disguised and passive-aggressive. Very few will walk up to someone and say, “You look like a slut in that dress.” They’re more likely to say, “Wow, that dress is a really brave
choice!” with a big smile. And this is when the cameras aren’t rolling. Put them on television, and they’re even less likely to misbehave. They’re just too savvy and image-conscious by the time they get to this level
.