A Crowning Blow for Miss America

By: Amy S. Rosenberg
Posted In: Entertainment

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.- The woman in the long gown and big hairdo stands in the center of the stage, wiping away tears, surrounded by her fellow contestants, watched by millions in television land.

It is the quintessential “Miss America” moment — except that it’s not.

It’s Nadia Turner being booted off “American Idol,” and therein lies the problem for the Miss America brain trust as it desperately tries to get someone in Hollywood to rescue the storied old American icon.

The reality shows have stolen the tried-and-true Miss A formula, given it a few twists and left the girl paralyzed in her heels.

Still without a television contract five months before showtime — ABC dumped the show last year after years of ratings declines — the pageant is trying to stave off imminent meltdown by embracing an extreme makeover.

The Miss America Organization has hired the William Morris Agency to shop a pageant telecast reworked as a reality show, with competition stretched over several episodes, backstage access and possibly even an open vote for the winner. (For that, there is precedent: In the original pageant in 1921, on the beach, audience applause counted for 50 percent of scores.)

But change is always dicey in Miss A land, where protectors of the faith warn that they will not allow their girls to be embarrassed or subject to ridicule. Translation: no Simon Cowell, no bug-eating, no backstage backstabbing (hey, a Miss A contestant would never backstab, right?).

“We’re not going to rush into anything,” insists the guy in the hot seat, pageant CEO Art McMaster. “We’re just coming off a bad relationship. We want to find the very, very, very, very best fit. We’ve always considered ourselves a reality show. Our problem is we are only one night a year.”

Indeed, the multigenerational appeal of sitting before the TV, appraising candidates and waiting in suspense for the winner is a ritual that “Miss America” practically invented. Now, families are doing that two and three times a week with “American Idol,” “The Apprentice” and the like. No need to wait for “Miss America” on a late-September Saturday night.

But the reality shows do two things “Miss America” has never done: They subject their contestants to harsh criticism, and then, with great fanfare, crown the loser.

Among pageant people, there is big disagreement on how much of the reality aesthetic Miss America can absorb without losing her soul.

Leanza Cornett, Miss America 1993 and one of a number of outspoken former Miss As, says go for it.

“A really well-produced, nitty-gritty reality program could attract that kind of (big) audience,” said Cornett, who herself shook up the Miss A world by embracing an AIDS-awareness platform. “I want to see girls with zero makeup getting up in the morning, girls getting a little bitchy with each other because they’re exhausted. Their real personalities. Because that’s what happens in Atlantic City.”

But traditionalists, such as California’s Bob Arnhym, head of the national group of state pageants, warns that there is a line that the old guard will not allow the contestants to cross. “The reality concept of having cameras in the dressing room, when they would leave the stage, when they’re the most vulnerable — frankly, I would equate that to putting a bugging device in the ladies’ room,” Arnhym said.

“I believe the audience for reality television has a coliseum mentality,” he said. “Those viewers are not cheering for the gladiator; they’re cheering for the lion. We would have to cross the line in terms of what we’re willing to ask our contestants to do to attract that audience.”

Still, of all the current reality shows, “American Idol” actually maintains a very “Miss America”-like aesthetic, with contestants refusing to speak ill of each other and huddling together as the survivors become fewer and fewer. And the show’s drama feeds off live contests rather than taped, edited competitions.

(The success of “American Idol” has buoyed the people who support the much-maligned “Miss America” talent competition, which ABC pressured the pageant to all but eliminate.)

But whereas “Miss America” dismisses most of its contestants within the first few minutes of the show, “American Idol” knows how to mine the audience connection week after week. McMaster believes that would work for “Miss America,” which, after all, already has state pageants to produce contestants, plus a week of preliminaries in Atlantic City.

“When you’ve got a punch line that big, try to milk the story for as long as you can,” said Robert Thompson, a popular-culture expert at Syracuse University. “The ‘American Idol’ producers, they would take the ‘Miss America’ crown and take two years to award it.”

The winners of “American Idol” and “The Apprentice” get some very concrete prizes: a recording contract, a job with Donald Trump. What happens to Miss America? After winning her crown and scholarship money, she pretty much vanishes. Without a salary or national sponsors, her year is spent chasing after appearance fees that can leave her with a few too many car conventions on her schedule.

Which brings up what may be the real question vexing the pageant in its current crisis: Does being Miss America still mean enough to make anyone care?

“That’s the ugly little secret of ‘Miss America,'” Thompson said. “Great brand identification. But except for bragging rights, for most Americans, it’s a hollow victory.”

Who even knows who last year’s Miss America was? Who knows how she spent her year? What was her platform? Talent? Any clues?

Are pageants just passe?

Even with Donald Trump’s magic touch, the appearance-is-all “Miss USA” pageant tanked in the ratings earlier this month, scuttling the conventional wisdom that “Miss America” needed to sex itself up to draw viewers.

Is the pageant on the brink of the unthinkable?

“Maybe it’s time, and I don’t want to be negative, but maybe it’s time that pageants go away,” said Cornett. “I think it’s an institution, and I certainly benefited from it. But you could call the office in Atlantic City and talk to five different people, and they don’t know who Miss America is supposed to be.”

Those who shudder at the idea of chasing after a TV fad might do well to recall that, at its birth, the pageant was a gimmick to extend the beach season. Only later did it morph into a quest for the wholesomest beauty of them all.

Reigning Miss New Jersey Erica Scanlon, who is promoting autism awareness, insists that the titles still mean something. She sees it in the reaction of middle school girls when she visits, for example, or in her own response to “Miss America” (Deidre Downs; aspiring pediatrician; platform: curing childhood cancer).

Not to sound too pageant-y, but Scanlon says the girls at last year’s pageant were, truly, role models: intelligent, ambitious, attractive, talented, articulate — and yes, nice. How bad is that?

“It’s a shame to see ratings go down, because the crown really does hold a lot of power,” said Scanlon, who believes that the pageant’s Saturday-night date spells its TV doom. “I still think there’s this huge audience of people who are enamored and somewhat taken by, star-struck by, the title ‘Miss America.'”

In Atlantic City itself, where casinos are mostly indifferent to the pageant, but generation after generation of pageant hostesses volunteer for chaperone and other duties every year, there is low-grade panic that the prized civic ritual could be rendered unrecognizable by the hard realities of the TV dollar.

“They plan a life around it,” said local radio personality Pinky Kravits. “It has a tradition. You have to stand for something. If they go to reality, they’re going to lose the quality ‘Miss America’ stands for. Women are above that.”

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c 2005, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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