At the Miss America Pageant, It’s Always an Election Year

Miss America barrels toward its 100th year against the backdrop of another higher-stakes reality pageant.

by

• Kenzie Bryant

September 13, 2016 6:42 pm

Here she is, 2017’s Miss America, Savvy Shields.

Courtesy of Michael Loccisano/Getty Images.

The ride down to the 96th-annual Miss America pageant in Atlantic City came with an enthusiastic Philadelphia-based fan, an older gentleman with one tooth. Last year, he embarked on his A.C. vacation as he usually does (he goes for the beach, not the casinos) and the show happened to be that week. Tickets were about $20, so why not go? It’s something to do in early September when the weather’s still warm and the hotel rates are lower. He was in it for the spectacle.
“It’s kind of like Brazil a little bit. Just a teeny bit,” he said. “See, Brazil is bankrupt and they have all kinds of graft and things going on. But they’ll never give up Carnival. They’ll be dancing until everyone is penniless.”
Complicated comparison aside, once you’re inside the massive Boardwalk Hall event space where the actual pageant is held, you can almost forget that Atlantic City was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy until it accepted a loan from the state of New Jersey in July. The imposing set design delivered on the promise of spectacle. The show’s service to Atlantic City is a part of its very traditional heritage. Once called “Atlantic City’s Inter-City Beauty Contest,” the pageant that would evolve into Miss America started in 1921 as marketing material for the resort town in hopes of luring guests back after Labor Day. Only when looking to the back of the hall was one reminded that all of the 10,500 seats weren’t even close to being filled. Seat fillers were drawn in with free tickets advertised at the “Show Your Shoes” parade, a tradition in which pageant contestants ride down the boardwalk on the backside of convertibles in full state-themed costumes complete with elaborate heels, the day before. The line for this service was full of mothers and daughters and grandmothers and aunts, some in gowns, others in walking shoes and tees, some part of smaller pageants at another point in their lives, some just here to see an event, like my train companion.
Back in February, the state Casino Reinvestment Development Authority assigned $12.2 million in subsidies to the pageant, guaranteeing it three more years on the boardwalk. The contract will take the pageant through its 98th year.
Everyone I spoke to who was involved in the nearly century-old pageant maintained that what keeps the show fresh is each year’s crop of new contestants. They bring new talents and new community-service organizations. Take Savvy Shields, Miss Arkansas and this year’s winner, who stumbled mildly during the Q&A segment, but her dancing was solid. She’s sweet, bubbly, southern, and blonde, with an adjective for a first name and a verb for her last. She will serve the organization just fine as it trundles on towards its 100th year.
Still, the contest has a lot to contend with to hold its place in the national imagination, especially with an increasingly progressive, Web-native generation—and even more so in an election year in which the Republican candidate for the White House casts a long shadow over both the recent history of Atlantic City and the pageant world itself. Before the proceedings even started on Sunday, the rest of the country was preoccupied with news that the other major party’s presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, nearly collapsed at the 9/11 memorial. She was suffering from a bout of pneumonia. Meanwhile, I was being escorted to the den of beautification backstage at an old event that asserts it’s aging better than it is, in a worn-out town, on a day when all of America—not just the Misses—was pausing to remember its most hellish day this century.
Don’t get me wrong; I had fun at Miss America. The stage was larger-than-life, and the contestants were just as gracious, beautiful, and quick-witted as expected at a competition that weeds out women who aren’t. But it was the 15th anniversary of 9/11, and despite the tonally strange reminder in the middle of the show that Miss America was the first major, public event held after the terrorist attacks, I was left at a loss for how judging a handful of women’s turns in an evening gown was spun as a patriotic thing to do that day. When host Chris Harrison noted in his welcoming remarks, “We are not affiliated with any other TV competitions or any presidential candidates,” it got a laugh from the crowd, but it underlined the higher-stakes reality pageant gripping the nation, one that will have a long impact on the country that Miss America has written into its name.

SUITS AND HEELS
Camille Sims, Miss New York, said the swim category made her the most nervous. “I don’t strut around in high heels and bikinis all the time,” she said. “I always tell myself take a deep breath. You can get through it. Two snaps and a twirl, girl.”

Courtesy of Donald Kravitz/Getty Images.

As I was brought backstage around three in the afternoon, the dressing rooms were calm. The contestants were preparing for rehearsals, and they were warned that from here on out “things are going to get a lot more hectic.” But at that time it was a flutter of eyeliner and hair curlers. Not the hot curlers that make ringlets, but big ones for big hair—ur-curlers. There was a sort of purposeful business to their preparation that was more practiced than stressed. The calm before the spectacle.
I intercepted Camille Sims, Miss New York, as she was trying to locate a dress in the racks of gowns. She was wearing a Spider-Man beach towel around her waist with a long-sleeve top modeled after a baseball tee. She told me that she found the time to win her Miss New York title during a gap year after graduating from Cornell. She had previously taken a break from pageants to finish a rigorous course study in human development with a minor in inequality studies. Her story brings up one of the many contradictions in the organization that harps on its scholarship component. In order to earn all that money for school, your commitment has to be on developing yourself for all rounds of the competition.
Sims, though, would like to dispel the notion that Miss America is somehow old-fashioned. “Miss America is someone different every year, and I think the spirit of her is what keeps her relevant,” she said. “I think a lot of people get caught up in the glam aspect. But . . . a whole bunch of it is service, a whole bunch of getting your shoes dirty, working with people, talking to people. And then like 5 percent is glitter and eyelashes.”
Later that night, before she placed third, Sims would answer her blunt question, “What do think about Donald Trump?,” as eloquently as anyone could be expected to—in a full-length ball gown, and in under 20 seconds.
“I think he’s a bright reminder of how our country needs to come together,” she said. “If you don’t agree with his message, then you need to decide where you stand on this debate. As Americans, we need to make sure that we are celebrating all people from all backgrounds.”
Her question’s inverse, “What do you think of Hillary Clinton?,” went to the eventual winner, Shields, who called the presidential nominees “contestants” before self-correcting to “candidate.” It was a telling slip; attention is given to the candidates’ hair (one more than the other), and both are judged more for their “sparkle,” in pageant parlance, when they’d have you believe they’d like to be judged for their “platform.”

MISS NEWSWORTHY
Erin O’Flaherty, Miss Missouri, did not make it to the evening wear portion of the show, but did a turn in the gown during rehearsals.

Courtesy of Donald Kravitz/Getty Images.

When the final 15 contestants were announced (about five hours and some change since the women had left rehearsals), their parents were held in a pen toward the back of the hall’s floor. A be-walkie-talkied wrangler stood in front of the group milling about, and when each name was called, the wrangler grabbed the fist-pumping fathers and tastefully tearful mothers’ attention so they could be escorted to their seats next to the stage. Miss Georgia’s and Miss Pennsylvania’s families were back in the huddle during the commercial break with seven more contestants to be announced. Each had a cool stoicism about them. They’d be proud of her, tiara or not. Just honored to be here. They knew the drill.
Miss Missouri Emily O’Flaherty’s mom was the only one to break from the pageant’s unofficial party line of scholarship and service, service and scholarship, and making friends.
“[We’re] feminist and supportive.” How? “We don’t see it as a pageant; we see it as a competition,” she said. After four hours, it was somehow a relief to hear someone frame the competition aspect as a positive.
O’Flaherty had been the focus of most media coverage up until Shields took the crown because she’s the first openly gay contestant at that level. Her platform is suicide prevention, especially among L.G.B.T. youth, and she’s become practiced at taking the good with the bad in terms of attention during her time as Miss Missouri. “I’ve heard from so many people already that have reached out to me, thanking me for even just talking about it, so that’s what I hope to continue to do,” she said during a rushed moment in the dressing room. And also, “Yeah, there have definitely been negative comments but I don’t ever look at them. To see them I really have to go looking for them, so I really don’t put any weight on that.”
“Probably 50 people” came to support her in Atlantic City, “so no matter what happens tonight, I’ll still have them.”
Miss Michigan, Arianna Quan, was another standout. Quan became a naturalized citizen at the age of 14 after moving to Detroit from Beijing when she was 6. She made waves with her thoughts on immigration reform that then led to a round of criticism and response for her non-traditional appearance—non-traditional for the pageant circuit, that is. She offered a rare suggestion that all parents on the pageant circuit weren’t 100 percent thrilled to have a queen in the family. “Not to say that [my parents] weren’t supportive,” Quan said. “But they were very reluctant. I study automotive design and their first concern was, ‘How are you going to expect to be respected in an industry if you are competing in a pageant? No one’s going to take you seriously.’ So that was a little bit of a challenge to overcome. I knew that this was something I wanted and it just felt right.”

LADIES IN WAITING
The Miss Outstanding Teen queens were arguably having the most fun together, rooting for the older versions of themselves.

Courtesy of Michael Loccisano/Getty Images.

Save for Sims, none of the families’ daughters or the contestants with whom I spoke made it into the top 15. I began to worry I was bad luck. While a handful of Miss America’s Outstanding Teen queens I’d been sitting with were singing along to Meghan Trainor’s “Me Too” during the bathing-suit portion, I excused myself to the highest tier of the balcony. The view was better there and the audience’s allegiances were looser. I sat with a family from Staten Island. They had an uncle who claimed to have ties to the Miss New York organization (although “I honestly couldn’t tell you [how],” said the mother), but besides that they were just there to see the show. The family patriarch had been to “10 or 11” of the pageants, taking his daughter (and eventually his daughter’s daughter) every year except 2001, which was held a little over a week after the terrorist attacks. Mom wouldn’t let him take her, but he went. They agreed that Miss Maryland Hannah Brewer’s “God Bless America” was a great choice to sing during the talent portion. “On 9/11? You bet,” he said. It didn’t manage to sway his belief that Miss South Carolina would take the crown with Texas as a runner-up, though.
The peanut gallery can judge from the rafters and from their couches at home, but the final decisions come down to the judges, who are wrangled by Dick Clark Productions from different pockets of pop culture, Shark Tank shark Mark Cuban, Olympian Gabby Douglas, and singer Ciara were among the chosen. Douglas was most nervous about the swimwear portion not because she had to judge bodies but because she’d heard “it goes by really fast. There’s like no time,” she told me. “I’m like, Oh my gosh, I want to be fair! I don’t want to be rushed. I’m sure the contestants are like, ‘Oh let me hurry up,’ and we’ll be like, ‘Wait! Come back!’”
The randomized nature of the judges’ decisions is fairly well understood all-around. In the dressing room before anything had started, the contestants had been told that in another year with different judges, another winner would be crowned. In line for snacks during one of many commercial breaks, I overheard a dejected family member who was trying to cajole a father-of-the-contestant down from the hotel room for a drink after she didn’t make top 15, said, “These things are so subjective. It could be like, ‘Well, she wore a gold heel, when copper is it this year.’”
The votes are almost the judges’ second job. The first is trying to lend the pageant some crossover relevance. As Cole Swindell, plucked from the country-music world to judge for the night, who played the guffaw “who me?” card well, said, “I don’t consider myself a celebrity, but the fact that you’ve got celebrity judges. . . . They have fans out there, so hopefully our fans are tuning in to see that and it just grows the whole brand.” In turn, Dick Clark Production circulates the pageant’s winner at its other televised red-carpet events like the American Music Awards or Country Music Awards. Last year’s Miss America, Betty Cantrell, presented at the Billboard Awards in May, for example.
In the end the judges were all pleased with whom they selected. Cuban told VF.com that he’d pay any one of the girls to sit down with his two daughters; that they are the type of people he’d invest in. Ciara and Shields checked each other’s teeth as they got on the press-room stage, and Ciara gave the winner one final hug and a meaningful look before she had to leave Shields to photo ops with her rose bouquet.

BABY QUEENS
The crowd was littered with younger girls in tiaras, some of which were won in smaller competitions.

Courtesy of Michael Loccisano/Getty Images.

The show—not even all the hard work that leads up to the show, like the appearance, service, talent, and speech preparation—but the part where 52 women are put on a stage and narrowed down to 1—has drawn comparisons to The Bachelor. Harrison, who fittingly hosts both programs (Miss America since 2004; The Bachelor since 2002), told me that at least one contestant expressed interest in crossing over. “I won’t name names, but Miss Kentucky said, ‘You’ve never had a Miss America as the Bachelorette have you?,’” he said. “And I said, ‘Well, Miss Kentucky, if you want to apply, you can.’”
Whether or not Harrison was talking about this year’s Miss Kentucky, Laura Jones, she one of two in the least enviable position of the night. After going through the evening-wear and swimsuit portions of the pageant, she came out onstage and warmed up for the talent segment only to be cut before performing. It seemed especially cruel that Harrison made her explain that she was going to perform Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” on the violin in her sequined bodysuit and matching fedora. But it’s the sort of stunt that might play hilariously and memorably at the beginning of The Bachelor, as contestants get out of the limo to give their maybe future husband an initial taste of their personality.
All the camp that makes truly great reality television was there to be mined. In fact, so many of the segments suggest each woman would make a wonderful Bachelor contestant. Both groups are judged on evening gowns and swimsuits for the most part—or at least those are the parts that reach the televised portion of events. But the Bachelor women get the opportunity to tell America who they are (or whom its producers have decided to edit them into being); Miss America barely offers that courtesy over the course of a two-hour show.
Talking to them in the hurried crush of the backstage hustle, I was unsurprisingly excited and impressed, as were the judges, and, of course, their families had great things to say. Still, the contestants could talk their veneers off about their projects and their studies and what makes them unique, but all America’s 6.2 million viewers got were a couple of beauty-based turns down the stage—first in swimsuits, then in gowns—some baton twirls, and 20 seconds of confusingly political and obviously rehearsed robot-speak. At the end of the spectacle, the audience has little idea who they are, and it’s hard to root for someone you don’t know.

http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2016/09/miss-america-2017-savvy-shields