Miss America 2007: Part One

Above: That’s right, we’re headed to see Miss America...

I realize this article is so late as to be absurd, but I feel compelled to post it...

When Normal Girl and I first met back in 1988, she was the reigning Miss Maine National Pre-Teen. She continued to compete in pageants in Maine, and in each subsequent state she lived in thereafter. Her video collection includes many editions of the grandmammy of all scholarship competitions: Miss America.

After we won our Vegas vacation on that lucky scratch ticket (thanks again to the South China mini-mart who sold it to us), we had to figure out when to go. Ideally we wanted to escape the dreary New England winter, but undergraduate admissions offices go into crisis mode between December and April, so Keryn’s work schedule presented some challenges. Her bosses informed her that exactly one week--the last week in January--would fit neatly in the lull between Early Action and Regular Admissions, and would therefore permit two days of vacation.

In a great stroke of serendipity, that weekend happened to correspond with the 2007 Miss America, which relocated from Atlantic City to Las Vegas a few years ago.

Keryn couldn’t have been more excited...

I fired off our preferred dates to the “grand prize fulfillment” people (a friendly and helpful bunch in Alpharetta, GA). A week later, “Lisa” left me a voicemail: “Mandalay Bay is booked on your other suggested weekends, so we’re doing everything we can to make it happen for the last weekend in January.” A day later, she confirmed our travel, and Keryn rushed to the Internet where two balcony seats for the Miss American main event were ours for the taking.

Before the trip, Keryn made sure I was well versed in how the pageant works, because it was imperative that we place a casual bet on the proceedings. She built a spreadsheet listing each contestant, her talent, and other salient characteristics, and encouraged me to go through the website, reviewing each profile. And so, under duress from my beautiful girlfriend, I pored over the photographs, career aspirations, and college majors of fifty-one rather pretty women. There are worse ways to spend a Tuesday night.

To continue our preparation, we watched a CMT special, “Pageant School,” which showed the future contestants in the “Super Bowl of Women” (Miss Texas’s words, not mine) doing each other’s makeup, learning to line dance, and racing obstacle courses. (Dead serious on all three activities). Although I felt somewhat-to-very emasculated upon seeing one of the women in a subsequent advertisement and recalling her name, it was good for me to get an inside look at the pageant, and into what Keryn did for those many years. It’s kind of frightening, actually.

What amazes me is that the women manage to be so nice to each other, when they surely pray for the others to screw up… It’s a competition where the combatants are not allowed to outwardly exhibit their competitiveness. That aspect might impress me more than anything. To smile and compliment your enemy takes guts. If, years ago, Mike Tyson had said “I admire my opponent and think he is a wonderful person” in lieu of “I want to eat his children,” wouldn’t it have been ten times more frightening?

Tomorrow… The epic saga continues…