In the preliminary we went through all the paces, and the judges had to watch everyone compete and rate us individually on the score sheet. Only the top ten would be competing in the televised show.
It was a crushing schedule, and a tremendous challenge. When you’re in this kind of situation you’re always fighting to keep your confidence levels high. I’d get up early and run on a treadmill in the mornings, trying to focus my mind. Whenever I could during the day, I slipped away to practice my violin. There were rooms upstairs in the convention center—they were up near the rafters and a little scary—and I used whatever time I could steal, even if it was only a few minutes, as solo time for my fingers and my mind. I needed it! The dance rehearsals were so demoralizing, and those breaks always restored my spirits.
In spite of my determination to stay focused, a big blow came three days before the pageant. The Atlantic City newspaper published the predictions of a retired statistics professor named George Miller, who had developed a computer program designed to pick the next Miss America. He’d correctly selected five of the last ten Miss Americas, including runners-up. Miller entered information into the program such as height, eye color, hair color, weight, measurements, and talent. His pick for my year was Miss Arkansas, followed by Miss Pennsylvania and Miss South Carolina. I didn’t even make the top ten. Commenting on my talent—I was the only violinist that year—Miller said that sometimes violinists made the top ten, but they never won. Why? “It’s hard to emote with that thing under your chin.”
Clearly, though, Miller gave the most weight to beauty, declaring that the single most important thing you could do to win Miss America was to win the swimsuit competition. Oh, and be tall.
It frustrated me that people still thought that Miss America was about choosing the perfect physical specimen. People confused the pageant with Miss USA, which feeds into the Miss Universe pageant, and that really was a beauty contest. If I’d entered Miss USA, I would have been dead last. I wasn’t a model, and I could never walk like one.
Yes, it was fun to put on beautiful clothes and have my makeup and hair done—albeit 1988-style hair! But that was never the main impetus for me. I was competing because I knew I could nail the talent and achievement portions. The rest was extra. Without my talent I would never have been Miss America.
Times had definitely changed. Back in the 1920s when the pageant first started, the only thing that mattered was how you looked. I mean only. The scoring was entirely devoted to perfection head to toe: fifteen points for construction of head, ten for eyes, five for hair, five for nose, five for mouth, ten for facial expression, ten for torso, ten for hands, ten for legs, ten for arms, and ten for grace of bearing. Whew! That list gives me pause, especially the score for construction of head. My parents always talked about how I had an odd-shaped head as a baby. I guess I would have been out of luck with that scoring method.
We were in a new era, but there were still ongoing protests that the Miss America pageant was a crass objectification of women. I had heard that there was some upset in the Miss California pageant my year when one of the contestants, Michelle Anderson, said she had entered for the sole purpose of going to Atlantic City and exposing the way the pageant demeaned women. She didn’t win, but when they announced the winner, she rushed onto the stage and pulled a silk scarf out of her chest that read “Pageants Hurt All Women.”
But I saw it differently. For me and for most of the contestants, winning Miss America was not about being crowned the most beautiful Barbie. I’m not saying looks didn’t enter into it, although I wasn’t even close to being the prettiest. It was about competing on a high level and challenging myself to be at the top of my game. It was also about winning scholarship money that would help me pursue my dreams. This wasn’t the 1920s. We all had a lot going on—and by the way, I say to this day that there’s nothing wrong with being smart, talented, and attractive.
In that respect, Miller’s computer system was anachronistic. Still, it got a tremendous amount of play, although as it turned out none of the contestants he picked even made it to the top ten. I have to admit it shook my confidence. Miller quit doing predictions after my year, grumbling that “they’ve downgraded swimsuits so much that it took care of poor old George. They’re getting better people. They seem brighter and come from better schools.” In other words, attributes harder to measure with a computer program. I was glad to hear him say it, but at the time the computer results really upset me.
The preliminaries for talent, swimsuit, and evening gown were held at the convention center, and people could buy tickets to come and watch, so the seats were always full—mostly with enthusiastic fans, family members, and pageant devotees. We wouldn’t find out who was in the top ten until we were on television Saturday night.
Each morning before I left the hotel, I had my makeup done, because the makeup artists weren’t allowed in the hall. I had brought in a fabulous lady named LuAnn Mancini, a talented Texan whose claim to fame was that she did Dan Rather’s makeup—which shows her range. LuAnn was a delight and something of a genius. She had perfected an airbrushing technique, long before it was in common use in TV studios. My makeup stayed pretty set for the whole day, but there was still a lot of preparation before the shows.
To get ready, we had a massive backstage dressing room where all our fixing up went on. There were rows of cosmetic tables with mirrors and portable wardrobes. It was controlled bedlam. Special hostesses were in charge of the dressing room, and they were quick to help anyone who lost a button or tore a hem or had a stuck zipper. The hairspray was so thick you could barely breathe.
There has been a lot written about the “tricks” contestants supposedly use to give themselves an edge: Vaseline on the teeth to widen the smile, glue spray on the butt to keep the swimsuit from riding up, Preparation H under the eyes to reduce swelling. I knew a little bit about some of the tricks, but as a pageant novice I hadn’t really given any thought to actually trying them. I figured none of them would make me play the violin better or sound smarter in the interview, so I didn’t do them. Later, when the reporter Penny Crone asked me which parts of me were real and which weren’t, I have to say I was shocked. I’d been focusing on the substantive and real things I thought would actually help me win Miss America.
People always ask me if I made friends during the pageant or if it’s a cutthroat competitive environment. Frankly, people have the idea that when women compete it’s either a catfight or a lovefest. I would say neither is true. It was a competition. Think of any other competition. When you watch the Super Bowl, you aren’t thinking, “I hope those guys love each other and become friends for life.” Nor is there any mention of the male equivalent of catfighting. They’re just competing. But when women are involved, the standard seems to be different.
As I saw it, if you really wanted to win Miss America, you might not be Miss Congeniality. (Only one Miss Congeniality, Vonda Kay Van Dyke, in 1965, ever won Miss America.) Not that you weren’t a nice person. But you had to have a laser focus, and that could be construed as being aloof. I’m the most outgoing person you’ll find, but in a competitive atmosphere, I don’t get sidelined by distractions.
At the end of swimsuit and talent nights, all of the contestants gathered onstage and the highest scorer was announced. When my name was called as the winner of the talent competition on my preliminary night, I was deeply satisfied—aware that I was almost halfway there. I thought about how it was my talent that started me on this road, and I was exactly where I wanted to be.
By the day of the pageant I was exhausted and wound up as tight as a violin string. I had performed in front of large crowds for most of my life, and in my youth when I stepped onto a stage to give a violin performance I always felt confident and completely at ease. Now there were too many elements that were beyond my control. My talent win gave me confidence, but there were several other hurdles—assuming I made it into the top ten.<
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I saw my family at seven in the morning for the last time before being whisked away to the convention center where we were locked in all day. My mom met me in the lobby of the hotel. She hugged me and, holding my shoulders, looked me in the eye. “You can do this,” she said. “You know how hard you worked for it.”
Looking into my mom’s eyes I had a flashback of all the times over the years when we’d been in similar situations together. I realized how much I relied on her for her unwavering support and love. I hugged her tight, tearing up with emotion. It would be a long day without her by my side, but having her there that early morning was just what I needed.
Then it was off to the convention center for a final day of grueling rehearsals. We worked on our production numbers all day, broke for a quick dinner, and then had hours to get ready. There was a lot of sitting around waiting, which wasn’t so good for jangled nerves.
The 1989 Miss America pageant opened with Miss America 1988, Kaye Lani Rae Rafko, strolling across a college campus, young students walking in the background, welcoming viewers with an introduction about giving women opportunity. She was a wonderful exemplar for all of us, a registered nurse who was passionate about hospice care and dedicated to pursuing her career.
Then the announcer boomed the welcome to the Miss America pageant, “starring fifty-one talented and progressive women who’ve got success!” And we launched into our choreographed number.
After that, the top ten finalists were announced. When my name was called it was an enormous relief. I didn’t have time then to think about the contestants who didn’t make it, but later I reflected on what a blow it must have been for them. After months and even years of hard work, they were basically watching the pageant from backstage, with occasional appearances for production numbers. They had to keep those smiles pasted on their faces, even though they knew that for them the pageant was over. It was impressive to me how they kept their poise and spirit, even in defeat. A couple of years ago I was doing a live spot at the pageant with the women who had not made the top ten. I said into the camera that these women would go on to excel in many ways, and that one day one of them might even become president of the United States—to which Miss Nevada, standing nearby, called out, “Sign me up!” The number one question I get asked as a former Miss America is whether or not the pageant is still relevant today. And I say, “Of course,” because the contestants are some of the smartest, talented, and most driven young women in America.
For me the highlight of the pageant was the talent competition—the one event where I felt completely confident, especially after winning the preliminary. I wore my elaborate (but inexpensive) green dress purchased so many months earlier in Canton, Ohio. Before I went onstage, I closed my eyes and said the Lord’s Prayer, thinking of Grandma Hyllengren and feeling her presence strongly, as I always did at important times of my life. That moment of prayer and reflection put me in a state of peace. And once I was onstage, the pressure and nervousness faded away and I lost myself in the music.
I was playing a portion from Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs) by Pablo de Sarasate. My parents and I had spent countless hours perfecting the exact cuts for the performance because the piece was eight minutes long and I only had three and a half minutes to perform. Our goal was to showcase the three parts that would most impress the judges and the audience. I opened with a flourish to pull the audience in, then transitioned to the slow, melodic—hopefully mesmerizing—part to show my passion and emotion. I finished with a fast, upbeat, difficult part. I wanted the audience with me, because judging is subjective, and it was important for the judges to experience the excitement of the audience.
I knew I had everyone spellbound during the middle, slow part of my performance, because you could hear a pin drop in the huge convention hall. My eyes burned with the start of tears, and they weren’t tears of sadness. As an artist I often teared up while I was playing, because the music was so haunting and beautiful. It was all a way of pulling out the most amazing passion and sound to captivate my listeners. Finally, during the fast and furious part of the performance I could hear the audience start to clap again and almost say “Wow” with their voices. A smile now came over my face as I was nearing the end of what had gotten me started—my violin. I had done it. I had shown that a true violinist, trained classically, could come to the Miss America stage and wow the crowd. Thank you, God.
At the end of my performance, when I bowed deeply, I thought my hair accessory was falling off, so I grabbed it and yanked it off. Turned out it wasn’t as loose as I thought it was, so I had to pull hard. I had a hairpiece on underneath, and I shuddered to think that I could have easily yanked off a hunk of hair along with the accessory as the finale to my performance. That would have made headlines!
I was nervous about the swimsuit competition, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. It was the one event of the pageant that naturally inspired dread. Although I had practiced “the walk” many times, I couldn’t get rid of the images of me stumbling on the stage, or the thought that close-ups of my butt would be seen on millions of TV screens. To make matters much worse, right before the swimsuit competition I got my period and had to rush around looking for a tampon. As I realized with horror that the string was dangling down, I grabbed a pair of scissors and cut it off. Moments later, I was walking onto the stage, trying to exude complete confidence in my rose-colored swimsuit.
Surprisingly, what turned out to be the most difficult moment was standing on the stage in my evening gown answering the question put to me by Gary Collins. He stood beside me and read from his card. “Miss Minnesota,” he said, “there’s much discussion of the influence of media in the political process. How do you feel about this issue?”
We had to stand really close to each other for the right camera angle, and I was short even in my high heels, so my eyes were level with Gary’s teeth. I was transfixed by his big, gorgeous, very white teeth. I blanked for a second and I didn’t really hear the question. I thought to myself, “I can’t ask Gary to restate the question on live television in front of millions of people.” So in a millisecond, with all those nervous thoughts in my head, I answered—and not very well. “I feel that being brought up with a moral background . . . and I was lucky enough to have a lot of values . . . that I would feel strong enough in my own decisions that the media would not disrupt any of my decisions in the political realm.”
After my response I continued walking down the runway, looking for my parents in the audience, wanting to give them a thumbs-down. I thought I had blown the whole thing with my answer, but there wasn’t time to wallow in my disappointment because immediately we were back onstage. I will say, though, that to this day I’ve never watched a video of myself giving that answer.
• • •
The longest twelve minutes of my life were spent on live national television, in front of an audience of millions, wearing a blue sequined gown, convinced that I had just lost the Miss America pageant.
It was the end of the night, the moment of truth. The ten of us were lined up on the stage, holding hands, waiting for the panel of celebrity judges seated in an orchestra pit below us to hand Gary their verdict. Suddenly it became clear that something was very wrong. From my perspective on the stage I watched what the audience and viewers at home couldn’t see—the judges were scrambling around frantically. They were in a panic, flipping through a program book that listed all the contestants, six on each spread.
Gary Collins walked over to the edge of the stage, thinking they would hand him the results. “May I have the decision, please,” he said. There was a furious consultation and he reeled back. “You have a what?” he cried. “A tie? Can you believe this?”
Shock rocked the hall, and we stood in the spotlight, not knowing what would happen. I looked down at the judges and saw them flip to the spread with my picture. I knew exactly where my picture was on the page, and I could see it even from way up
on the stage. Someone pointed to my picture in the book. And then the crushing blow. They all shook their heads, no. I sucked in a breath and fought to keep my smile in place. My eyes searched the audience for my mother; she would let me know that everything was okay. But I couldn’t find her. So I began to think about what I would do to be a graceful loser—how I could breathe meaning into a year of the most incredible effort I had ever made. All my hard work—the dieting, the brutal exercise regimen, the humiliating swimsuit fittings, the endless mock interviews, the violin practice—had come down to this. In that moment, I was convinced that I was doing the thing I hated most in the world. I was losing.
When Gary announced that there was a tie, we naturally assumed that it was between the winner and the first runner-up. It turns out the tie was between the third and fourth runner-up. But those twelve minutes were a lifetime. And I spent most of them thinking I was toast.
To make matters worse, Gary was desperately trying to fill the time. We were on live TV and we couldn’t just stand there. So he started asking us more questions. He asked me what I would have done differently—which I thought was the kind of question you ask people who lose. I cringed and said that I would have answered my question better. I thought I’d blown it with my answer, and I was dying inside.
I knew one thing. I had no choice about whether I was picked, but I did have a choice about how I reacted. I decided I was going to accept loss with a positive attitude—not be devastated by it as I had been when I’d lost Miss T.E.E.N. I told myself it had taken a lot of guts to get up there, no matter what the outcome. As those moments passed, I was having the biggest learning experience of my life. I realized that after all my incredibly hard work, I had still won no matter what happened.
The minutes ticked by. Gary and his cohost wife, Mary Ann Mobley, were getting increasingly desperate for things to say as the judges reballoted. It was excruciating. We were like statues on the stage, frozen in place, clutching hands. Smiling on the outside, wilting on the inside.
Getting Real Page 10