95 Piccadilly – January 16, 2025
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The crowning of Miss Alabama Abbie Stockard as the new Miss America last week began a process of contemplation. As a writer, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing the late Chelsi Smith, Miss Universe 1995, and Teresa Scanlan, who, at 17, became the youngest Miss America in a century. The latter seemed hesitant to answer questions after agreeing to do so, which I never understood, as I eased myself into the conversation with what I thought were softball questions about her year-long reign. After watching A&E’s Secrets of Miss America and hearing Scanlan’s story, who I approached in the aftermath of her reign as Miss America 2011, I am much more sympathetic. To be propelled to instant celebrity, where you eventually lose yourself in the iconography of your title, as opposed to your name, and then have it all stripped away with a Burt Parks’ song playing to someone else’s glory has to be overtly trying, as the spotlight leaves you and you ultimately step back into the shadows. The question must always be, “who am I now?” It’s a question we all ask of ourselves from time to time, but most of us aren’t dealing with the expectations of staying young and beautiful and looking like we did when a panel of judges placed a crown on our head and those lifelong expectations around our neck (unintended, of course).
Former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst, who died by suicide in 2022, had written about those expectations. “Turning 30,” she had said, “feels like a cold reminder that I’m running out of time to matter in society’s eyes.” Many of the women in A&E’s documentary seemed deeply rattled by Kryst’s death, but all of them seemed to understand, one even admitting that she, too, had drunkenly stood on the edge of her own building’s roof. “That could have been me” seemed the overall consensus, but I don’t know if you need to be Miss America or Miss USA to feel those expectations. The beautiful often say that beauty is a curse. When, as president of a festival board in my hometown, I took the helm of that organization’s pageant to try and rebrand it back to its glory days, I dealt with a lot of women who seemed to feel the same.
As a former Miss Kentucky herself, my sister’s favorite book is “I Still Dream About You,” a Fannie Flagg novel about a former Miss Alabama, struggling to adapt to life years after her crowning glory. So engrained is this idea that these stories, I imagine, are endless. Naturally, when my sister arrived at a house fire nearly a decade ago, after knowing the family were safe, she asked firefighters to rescue her Miss Kentucky crown, a symbol, one imagines, deeply entangled in her own identity.
The truth is, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being Miss America. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being beautiful – in fact, it’s something we all can covet – but I do question some of the decisions made by these organizations that seem counter-productive. When Miss America and like-minded entities removed the swimsuit competition, I tend to believe they were feeding into the troublesome stereotype they thought they were fighting, essentially saying, “you can’t be smart and beautiful.” You can. After all, as Burt Parks sings, Miss America is “your ideal.” A pageant coach of my sister’s (yes, there are such things) always said, “swimsuit is won from the neck up.” I believe he spoke truth. In the end, the entire thing is a confidence competition, and if we, as a society, can learn to accept that – at any age and demonstrate that pivotal self-belief -then these women may step back into the spotlight with the equal parts brains and hard work that got them to great heights to begin with – and do so whatever their age. No pressure.