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--Tass, the Soviet press agency, on
pageant moms
"For Colombians,
the beauty pageants replace the violence we live with every day.
Especially
Miss Columbia is a sacred event; no one dares to criticize."
--Adriana La Rotta, Columbian TV reporter
 In 1958, two
finalists flabbergasted Bert Parks by tattling on live television
that they'd discovered backstage that they shared a common bond—a
two-timing military cadet boyfriend.
Miss Iowa
pronounced judgment on the philandering cadet: "I think he
has two very lovely ex-girlfriends." "She said it very
well," seconded
Miss California. --Miss America: In Pursuit of the Crown
Columnist
David J. Spatz on the press' view in the swimsuit competition:
"You
get to see too much watching the show in the hall, especially
from a runway seat where it's difficult to ignore epidermal imperfections
like tiny pockets of cellulite, fading stretch marks and dimples.
But television cameras have a habit of filtering out unsightly
blemishes; every woman looks perfect."
Upon being crowned
"Little Miss Cherub," a three-year-old girl waved an
envelope containing her scholarship at her mother watching from
the audience and yelled, "Mommy, I got mail!"
"Isn't
it a little ironic here? We pick politicians by how they look
on TV and Miss America on where she stands on the issues. Isn't
that a little backwards?"
--Jay Leno |
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Twelve
Miss
USA contestants were dining at a New York City restaurant to
promote the upcoming pageant when they were asked to pose for
photos. One of the chaperones, a fiftyish grandmother, joined
them in the picture. "That," quipped an on-looking diner,
"must be
Miss New York."
By the end of
the 1930s a disgruntled talent scout at the
Miss America Pageant
complained to Holiday magazine, "I'm telling you,
culture and respectability have ruined the Miss America Pageant!"
Carole Gist,
Miss USA 1990, on being the first black woman
ever to win the Miss USA title: "Nelson Mandela had been
freed and I had a feeling in my heart from God that a black
would win." ---To Cindy Adams
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 "Hey, I can't be Miss America!"
Patricia Gorrasi,
mother of five
upon being crowned Miss Garlic
at Kentucky's
Garlic Fest II.
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"At that
moment, it's kind of like dying. You're ALONE. There's nobody
that can do it for you." --Terry Meeuwsen,
Miss America 1973,
on winning
Tom Snyder once
asked Albert Marks, then boss of the
Miss America pageant, if
he had a favorite winner. "No," he answered, "to
me they all look like a plate of yesterday's mashed potatoes." Ooops. Wrong analogy. Later, at a gathering of former titleholders,
one winner called him to the podium for an "award"
and smashed him in the face with a plate of cold mashed potatoes.
"The sameness was what I meant," he lamely tried
to clarify. --The Miss America Cookbook
Sources: Atlantic City Magazine,
Glamour,
New York Times, Miami Herald, Miss America Cookbook (Rutlege Hill Press),
Miss America: In Pursuit of the Crown (MasterMedia), People,
Press of Atlantic City, Union News, Tropic, TV Guide
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Pageant Center: Pageant Quotes
