Something I'd like to hear:

[murielm99]

When a Miss America or a Miss Universe or any one of those beauty queens is asked about DADT, gay marriage, Social Security, tax "relief" or any other controversial social issue, she prefaces her remarks with a disclaimer. I would like to hear her say that she has an opinion, but she is just a beauty queen and not an expert. I know better than to listen to Miss Upper Midwest on the subject of Palestinian refugee camps, but then, that's just me.

[Rosie1223]

1. The same should be said of Elizabeth Hasselbeck.

:hi:

[Tobin S.]

2. What have you got against the upper midwest?

:P

I hear you. Those contests aren't about brains anyway.

[murielm99]

4. I don't have anything against the upper Midwest.

I live there. I just didn't want to single out a particular state or country. That might start a flame war and I am all out of popcorn.

[Tobin S.]

7. I was just pulling your leg

:)

[rrneck]

6. If only...

[Call Me Wesley]

3. I think they're pretty straight with their answers:

Miss Beverly Hills: “I feel like God himself created mankind and he loves everyone, and he has the best for everyone. If he says that having sex with someone of your same gender is going to bring death upon you, that’s a pretty stern warning, and he knows more than we do about life.”

:eyes:

[abq e streeter]

5. A long time ago--1973 Miss USA (and Miss Universe runner up) Amanda Jones

A progressive "beauty queen " (with a serious level of intelligence)

From enotes.com

She appears in Studs Terkel's 1980 book American Dreams: Lost & Found (under a pseudonym) where she recalled "One of the big execs from General Motors asked me to do a speech in Washington, D. C., on the consumer and the energy crisis. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the National Management Association. The White House, for some reason, sent me some stuff on it. I read it over, it was nonsense. So I stood up and said: "The reason we have an energy crisis is because we are, industrially and personally, pigs." Oh, they weren't real pleased.... Several times during my year as what's-her-face I had seen the movie The Sting. There's a gesture the characters use which means the con is on: they rub their nose. In my last fleeting moments as Miss USA, as they were playing that silly farewell speech and I walked down the aisle and stood by the throne, I looked right into the camera and rubbed my fingers across my nose. The next day, the pageant people spent all their time telling people that I hadn't done it...."

and from the sfgate.com


The other day, I remembered someone I hadn't thought of in years. It was the end of the day. I was about to go to bed, and suddenly Miss U.S.A. 1973 popped into my mind.
I wonder if any of you over-40 people out there remember her. When I was a kid, she made a big impression on me -- and no, I don't mean it in that way. Never one for beauty pageants, I happened to watch Miss U.S.A. that year, and I took a strong interest in Miss Illinois. She was totally different from the usual beauty pageant contestant: She was very pretty, but not the usual type. She was alert and intelligent and didn't in any way try to hide her intelligence, either. When she was asked a question, she answered it directly, and she seemed not to care in the slightest whether she won or not. In fact, she seemed to regard the pageant as something of a good-natured joke.




When they announced her as the winner, she didn't burst into tears. She said, "You're kidding." Then in her first press conference, she said she was pro-choice and pro-ERA. She went on to become the first runner up in the Miss Universe pageant, which I also watched, because by now I thought this woman was great.

As a pubescent boy, she was to me a kind of emissary from this wonderful world of the New Woman that I couldn't wait to know everything about. Does anybody else remember her? And does anybody know what became of her?

Oh, yes. Her name: Amanda Jones.

By the way, if you watch the video, make sure to either cut to the middle and watch to the end or watch the whole thing, because you'll get her interview with Bob Barker. You'll see what I'm talking about -- the intelligence, the genial no-nonsense attitude, and the willingness to be herself.

I wonder: Could this kind of woman win a national beauty pageant and be embraced as an example today?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkrzaBmsKmY&feature=player_embedded



......
She was an upper midwest girl ( Miss Illinois) and I'm proud to say that she was a friend in high school. Smart, funny, and just generally a cool person.......... P.S. she lost the Miss Universe competition to a woman named Moran...and by the way, Murielm99, I don't know if you're old enough to remember this, but being a northern Illinoisan, do you remember Chickenman, on WCFL in the mid-60's ? I only recently found out that while still in H.S., (Evanston) Mandy (no one in school ever called her "Amanda") played the part of the police commissioner's wife .

[murielm99]

8. "He's everywhere! He's everywhere!"

Of course I remember.

And whatever happened to Mandy? Do you know?

[abq e streeter]

9. Chickenmaaaaan....That's so cool that you remember that.But I guess most Chicagoans of a certain age

would. It was pretty damn funny, wasn't it? (of course this means that you're about as old as me.)
And means that Mandy's 60, or will be this year. (I'm a sprightly 59). How did this happen? I seem to remember having been young very recently...
Anyway, I have no idea what she's up to, and if it wasn't for occasional alumni newsletters and facebook, I'd have no idea what anyone from those days was up to. We were in-school friends only; I didn't have a lot of friends outside of school except my baseball and hockey buddies, and especially had very few of the female persuasion, but we were pretty friendly in school, and I remember that we were in a lot of classes together. Like I said, a smart, funny and nice person, and I found out stuff I never knew from googling her when I saw your OP on this subject. I love the story about rubbing her nose as her last official act as Miss USA, and only found out about her having been interviewed by Studs Terkel fairly recently too. And only found out about her being the commissioner's wife on Chickenman a few years ago. She never said a word about it back then. I doubt anyone but a few close friends of hers, if that, knew. I still remember watching her win the Miss USA Pageant with my roommates in Albuquerque in '73 and cracking up watching her. Still cracks me up watching the film of it on youtube. And also cracks me up that some writer for the SFgate actually wrote a story in 2007 about remembering watching her on TV THIRTY FOUR years earlier.