Being Miss America: Behind the Rhinestone Curtain (Discovering America) (27 page)

Over these same years I watch as MAO forces NAMASP to disband. My friends who know about this stuff (I do a stint as a vice president of our union, Actors’ Equity) say that this is a questionable legal move. It could be argued that NAMASP is a union, and that dismantling it—by forbidding franchisees to belong to an outside organization—would not be looked upon kindly by the Department of Labor. You can’t union-bust just because the members in question happen to be volunteers
.

I watch them chase people out of the organization after they stand up and object to the way things are being done. I watch them blackball my friends. I watch contestants get caught in the crossfire between warring factions. I watch them make up the rules as they go along
.

I sit in the audience and watch people roll their eyes as staff members and board members are featured onstage at pageant preliminaries in Vegas. Nothing wrong with the honchos saying a few words, of course. Except that on almost every occasion, those “few words” last, oh, thirty to forty-five minutes. People actually look forward to these speeches, so that they can hit the restroom. Or the bar. Or, hey, both! I’ve heard the emcee read executive bios that last twice as long as it takes for a girl to perform her talent. One year, it ac
tually becomes a bit. The host stops talking after a while to ask for a bottle of water. Talks some more. Requests a chair. Sits down, keeps reading. A stagehand comes out and dabs her forehead with a handkerchief. The audience roars with laughter
.

The next year, said host is conspicuously absent from the pageant
.

I end up doing what most people do after they’re disappointed enough times. I find that I have a lot less enthusiasm for fighting the good fight. And anyway, most of the people on the other side play dirty pool. So before I even pick up the cue stick, I know I’ll lose. I just spend less time around Miss America. If you don’t put your heart, your goodwill, your purity of spirit out there, it’s much easier to keep from getting hurt. And I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and all, but enough’s enough. You know, it’s the old “fool me once” adage. Except I let them fool me, all in all, dozens and dozens of times. Shame on me, right?

What it comes down to, really, is that there are two types of people involved with Miss America. There are those who are in it for the advancement of young women. Even if their version of that doesn’t involve teaching someone to articulate the nuances of America’s public school problems, or the situation in the Middle East, or how we can keep kids off drugs. Even if they just like to watch the way a girl’s posture and carriage and self-worth improve when she puts on a really beautiful gown. They like being around that progress, which is truly a lovely thing to witness. They want to make the world better, and their community better, one young woman at a time. I know that sounds like a really Miss America thing to say, but I wouldn’t say it if I hadn’t seen it over and over again
.

And the other type of person lets someone else do all that work, then uses Miss America as both literal and metaphorical arm candy
.

The arm candy group has mastered the parlance that
means the most to the ones who love helping young women. In fact, they count on that goodwill to keep people in line. Sometimes, it seems like Miss America—the institution, not the individual—has been taken hostage. They strategically place her in the middle of conflict; they position her as “under assault” when the status quo is threatened. They get away with it specifically because of the very love these volunteers have for the pageant. And thus the status quo doesn’t improve. In fact, as the arm candy people have more success with their manipulative tactics, the status quo actually gets worse and worse and worse
.

Dysfunction, like corruption, like addiction, flourishes in secrecy. Sooner or later, somebody has to decide that it’s time—as Keanu Reeves says in the movie
Speed
—to shoot the hostage. Because if you take away the hostage-taker’s leverage, if you disable his ability to drag everyone else down with his selfish agenda, you have a snowball’s chance of resolving the situation with relatively little collateral damage. In the case of Miss America, when reason, negotiation, and attempts to collaborate are routinely met with platitudes, stonewalling, and outsized personal attacks, there comes a point when someone just has to blow the roof off the joint and hope that exposing the misdeeds will provide a path toward correcting them. It’s not a perfect scenario—in fact, it’s pretty far down the list of ideal options—but sometimes, it’s the only way to save what you love
.

FOURTEEN

To the casual observer, the past couple of years seem to have been more successful ones for America’s oldest pageant.

In 2010, after the embarrassing split with TLC, MAO announced that it had reached a deal with ABC to broadcast the 2011 pageant. It was a surprise, to say the least, to those who felt that network television would never again darken Miss America’s doorstep. Despite relatively strong ratings performances in the preceding few years on CMT and TLC, the celebration among pageant fans was marked by one specific question: how had they managed to pull this off?

A day or two later, the answer presented itself. The first red flag appeared in the
Variety
story announcing the three-year deal, when Sam Haskell—whose election as board chairman had initially indicated significant promise, as he was the former Worldwide Head of Television for the William Morris Agency—“declined to comment on ABC’s new license fee.”

As it turned out, Haskell had good reason to be coy: it was a time buy. Unlike in years past, ABC would not be paying for the rights to televise the pageant. The network
would
be
paid by advertisers and sponsors for the privilege of using its airwaves to televise
Miss America
. As a point of reference, ABC paid a reported $5.6 million for its last telecast in 2004. Under the new arrangement, MAO—and whatever sponsors it could recruit—would have to foot the bill.

Although there was some “gotcha”-type crowing when the media discovered the nature of the deal, the return to ABC was widely regarded as a net positive. And some sponsorships did, in fact, come to fruition. Over the next couple of years, several large companies would come to the party. DSW, Amway, Express, and others saw opportunities for product tie-ins. Most of these relationships didn’t last more than a year or so, although Amway continued to provide funding (and contestants continued to shoot promotional videos about their favorite “Artistry by Amway” lip gloss) until 2013. The sponsorship dance has been relatively unfocused and random: since 2009, Miss America has hawked environmentally friendly water bottles, the dairy industry, vitamins, shoes, children’s bedroom furniture shaped like stiletto heels, and—wait for it—a custom seasoning, with her face on the bottle, sold primarily at the Indiana State Fair. For those of us who lean toward the thoughtful end of the spectrum, that one was particularly hard to swallow. Pun intentional. In most cases, it doesn’t feel like strategic alignment based on synthesized brand identity. It feels more like they’ll send Miss America out to talk about any company that will throw a few bucks into the kitty.

But at least sponsors have materialized. Although some of them haven’t stuck around for very long, the flow of resources is critically necessary. Around the time of the move to Vegas, the pageant was so far in the red that the leadership had very few options. As a response, a partnership was developed with Children’s Miracle Network Hos
pitals. Under the terms of the agreement, Miss America herself would serve as a Goodwill Ambassador for CMN during her year. This was not a new designation; past Miss Americas have held the same title.

Here’s what
did
break some ground: for the first time ever, the contestants would have to “pay to play,” by raising a specific sum in order to advance through the competition. In order to enter a local pageant, the required donation to CMN is $100; for a state, $250. Unlike Donald Trump’s rival for-profit Miss USA Pageant, where entry fees range from a few hundred dollars to thousands, Miss America has always prided itself on not charging an entry fee. With the advent of the CMN project, MAO manages to avoid the entry-fee label, while still reaping a significant payoff. Additionally, special awards (called “Miracle Maker” awards) have been created for the contestants who raise the most money. Some do go well above and beyond; a recent Miss Ohio, for example, put together a bike tour. She crisscrossed her state on two wheels and raised thousands of dollars.

There is, as it happens, a benefit for Miss America as well.

Of the money raised by the contestants, MAO gets a significant split, reportedly as much as 60 percent. The original plan dictated a layered payout to the local and state pageants. But for a while, these organizations could claim that money only if they were a recognized 501(c)(3) program, and in the last few years it has become increasingly difficult for any group with the word “pageant” in its name to obtain this designation. As a result, the national office has retained most of MAO’s split of the CMN dollars.

Is it a little shady to have thousands of contestants soliciting money for seriously ill children, when a large percentage finances the pageant they’re competing in? Probably. But as a high-ranking official privately said when the
partnership was developed, it happened because there was simply no other choice. If not for the CMN dollars, the pageant would have gone under. And really, if nothing’s sacred, what’s the problem with covering the operating costs under the banner of kids with cancer?

As for the platform issue, it has largely become a thing of the past . . . at least at the national level. Each contestant is still required to create a platform issue in order to compete for Miss America titles. And the outcome of the national competition is at least partly dependent upon which young woman makes the most persuasive case for how she plans to make an impact with her activism.

But during her actual year with the crown, Miss America’s individual platform issue is largely abandoned. The new talking points have everything to do with scholarship and little to do with causes, and the new breed of appearances focuses far more heavily on promoting the sponsors.

The irony, of course, is that the platform issue is an obvious solution to what ails Miss America. It’s a valuable resource if promoted correctly. Even Donald Trump has come to recognize that public service equals inherent value. Although they aren’t asked to develop individual platforms per se, his titleholders (Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA) now have their own activist agendas. Every Miss Universe focuses on HIV/AIDS issues, Miss USA targets breast and ovarian cancer charities, and Miss Teen USA works to promote anti-bullying and self-esteem initiatives. In August 2010, Miss Universe, Ximena Navarrete, was discussing her work with AIDS charities on NBC’s
Today
. Navarrete, like many other Miss Universe titleholders, traveled extensively to promote AID for AIDS, Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and a number of other HIV/AIDS-specific organizations.

Meanwhile, Caressa Cameron (Miss America 2010) had a lifelong commitment to AIDS service and prevention.
Cameron’s uncle had died of AIDS, and she had witnessed the struggles of an HIV-positive child fostered by her family. Her judging panel, which included conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, enthusiastically endorsed her as a valuable asset to her generation; Limbaugh, who surprised many pageant fans by becoming an outspoken supporter of a liberal African American AIDS activist, said afterward, “She has it all. Extraordinarily good conversationalist, amazing presence, unique and classic beauty, glamour . . . and the girl can sing!!” Cameron—who became an AIDS volunteer at age nine—went on to work for AIDS United, a national organization based in Washington, DC.

A review of her year, however, reveals that very little of her time was spent on her passion project. The official MAO press releases proclaim headlines like “Miss America 2010 Celebrates National Pancake Day!” “Miss America Cools Off the Summer Heat on [Dairy Queen’s] Miracle Treat Day!” and “Tune In Alert: Miss America 2010 on Pageant Talk Radio TOMORROW.”
Not one
of MAO’s fifty-odd press releases during Cameron’s year has a headline mentioning HIV/AIDS. While Miss Universe was promoting AIDS education in the Dominican Republic and Panama during her year, Miss America was in Columbus, Ohio; “Miss America Youth Collection Debuts” detailed the October 25 launch of the girls’ bedroom furniture line at Value City . . . an event that also featured Miss America 1971, Phyllis George.

Certainly, the press releases don’t tell the whole story. A deeper search on Cameron indicates that she did, in fact, participate in some platform-related activities. The point here, however, is that though those events may have taken place, and though Cameron undoubtedly used her Limbaugh-endorsed speaking skills to leave an impression on her audience, the MAO office did not promote them as major occasions. IHOP’s National Pancake Day is a nation
wide event that raises millions of dollars for the Children’s Miracle Network. But if the pageant is trying to shore up its brand, shouldn’t headlining a World AIDS Day conference at Howard University be as valuable as showing up in a crown to flip some pancakes?

In fact, none of the eight Miss Americas crowned in Las Vegas did much visible work with their platform issues. In many ways, it was as if the pageant simply decided that the execution of a platform-specific year required too much work. Here and there, they got opportunities, and occasionally attracted some favorable press (especially right after their respective crownings). But in most cases, the media seemed to gravitate toward those platforms that developed from individual personal narratives—Kirsten Haglund’s recovery from anorexia, Laura Kaeppaeler’s father’s imprisonment for a white-collar crime—rather than to be mobilized by an organized, top-down campaign focusing on each winner’s commitment to public service.