Changing an image is tough, especially if people think you are a dumb blonde who looks like Barbie on a starvation diet.
Now dress that woman in a swimsuit and heels, parade her around on a stage, ask her how to create world peace, put it on TV and you've got the image the Miss America Organization is trying to shake.
If the 80-year-old American institution known as Miss America is to survive in today's society, it must change, and the pageant's new president and chief executive officer, Robert Renneisen Jr., knows that.
Already, the pageant has mutated beyond its beginnings in 1921 as a publicity stunt to extend the Atlantic City, N.J., summer season. Today, the pageant is a vehicle by which college-bound women earn college scholarships, and contestants earn television exposure that often opens doors on Broadway, at recording companies and in television newsrooms and modeling agencies.
Meanwhile, the American public still only sees the stereotype.
Renneisen describes the attributes of a Miss America and it sounds like a cross between Mother Teresa and Madeleine Albright with the stamina of Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in the Alien movies.
But is the pageant willing to crown somebody who doesn't look like Cameron Diaz as well?
New-style contestant Take, for example, Miss California, Rita Ng, who doesn't look anything like Diaz but who could have a meaningful conversation with Albright.
Ng, 22, is almost everything the pageant has been looking for in a contestant. She's smart, talented and cares very deeply about her platform issue, promoting the health and welfare of America's children.
And if she wins the contest Saturday night, she would be the first Asian-American Miss America.
She graduated with a 3.99 grade point average at Stanford University and received a perfect score on her medical school entrance exam writing sample. She has spent the past few years traveling the world studying the impact of health care availability on children and the elderly. This summer, she was among Glamour Magazine's Top 10 College Women of the Year and was named to USA Today's "All-USA First Academic Team" as one of the top 20 undergraduates in the country.
"Rita is like Sarah Lee. Nobody doesn't like her," said Robert Arnym, Miss California executive director.
Humbled by her pageant experience, "I feel like Cinderella," Ng is bright and engaging in conversation. She excels in two of the most important areas of Miss America pageant competition: interview and talent (she is a classical pianist).
But Ng does not exactly have a hard body, Arnym said.
The Miss America Organization wants a well-rounded contestant, but does it want her well-rounded in a swimsuit?
Ng didn't think so. She spent the past few months working out twice daily to improve her chances in the swimsuit competition. She sculpted herself from a size 10 down to a size 6, but gained a few muscle pounds in the process. Most pageant contestants slither into sizes between 0 and 4.
"If this were a swimsuit competition and just a swimsuit competition, I would not enter, no less win," said Ng. "I was horrified at the idea of walking on stage in a swimsuit."
Actually, the first Miss America, 16-year-old Margaret Gorman, won the crown on her beauty and athletic figure in a swimsuit in 1921.
By the 1930s, the pageant introduced talent to the competition, college scholarships in the 1940s and platform issues in the late 1980s.
Today's Miss America no longer wears a sash identifying her title. The crown, only worn when she is crowned and when she crowns her successor, has been demoted to a lapel pin. On appearances, Miss America is more frequently seen in a business suit than a beaded evening gown.
The swimsuit competition But say Miss America, and most people are thinking of that swimsuit competition and a body like the blond bombshell Miss America 1986, Susan Akin Lynch.
Miss Ohio, Stephanie Meisberger, thinks about it every time she eats.
"I'm not starving myself, trust me," said Meisberger. "Funnel cake is my favorite food. And most of my appearances this summer have been at fairs. But when I go home, I get on the treadmill."
Her motivation is the $1,000 she could win in preliminary swimsuit competition in Atlantic City.
Meisberger, who both works and attends school full time at Franklin University, said she struggles with her weight, 125 pounds, which is in a healthy range for her height.
"It's tough when you sit down for a job," said the university's alumni relations assistant director. "I eat for a living."
If she's not the host of a breakfast meeting for potential donors to the university, she's at a midmorning meeting with doughnuts, or a lunch meeting, or a midafternoon meeting with cookies, she said.
"I can't be a two-ton-Tessie," said Meisberger, 22, whose platform issue is 4-H. "One of the four H's is health. I have to practice what I preach."
Miss Pennsylvania, Melissa Jeka, has more incentive than extra winnings to keep her swimsuit figure. She risks fines starting at $100 if she gains more than five pounds from her pre-determination weight, according to her contract.
"We've never enforced it," said Marlene Wynne, Miss Pennsylvania executive director. "That's just if somebody gets out of hand."
That's not likely for Jeka, 23, who has been fighting to put on weight so the judges can see her tiny frame on the massive Convention Hall stage, said Wynne.
A trained ballet dancer, Jeka suffers from an intestinal disorder similar to irritable bowel syndrome, Wynne said. Jeka cannot digest fats and doubles over in pain if she accidentally eats a fatty meal, Wynne said.
Renneisen has no intention of taking the swimsuit competition out of the contest.
"People want to see it," Renneisen said. Miss America without swimsuit competition would be "like the Academy Awards show without the Oscar statue. Something would be missing."
In fact, a live phone-in vote on whether to keep swimsuits in the pageant several years ago proved that. And in 1997, the pageant first allowed two-piece swimsuits but no thongs or string bikinis.
Swimsuit is only one aspect of competition and the contestant's stamina, interview and public speaking skills are more valuable to the winner and later in life.
But even for a winner, the memory of that slender body can be haunting.
'I was too thin' "I was too thin," said Lynch. "And I lost it the wrong way - not eating and overexercising."
Lynch, who also wrapped her body in plastic wrap to drop that last pound of water before her swimsuit competition, was one of the thinnest Miss Americas to walk the runway at 5 feet 9 and 114 pounds.
She said she worked hard for that body. Then real life set in.
Eleven years later, while acting as host of the Miss Pennsylvania pageant, Lynch was quick to talk about her plump figure before others could.
"I just had a baby," she explained on stage. And after giving the audience a chance to applaud, she said, "Four years ago."
She is expecting her second child, is living in Mississippi and - after a lot of soul-searching - feels more comfortable with her womanly figure, she said.
"I never want to be that thin again. I couldn't maintain it and be happy," she said in her Southern drawl. "But one of my hardest realizations was that my stomach will never be concave or flat again. And that's OK. I have a wonderful family and a child on the way. To hell with people who don't like me because I'm not thin."
close