Welcome to the supersecret Miss America training center.
For the third year in a row, Miss New York took home the crown in Atlantic City — and we can thank a state program that treats the celebrated pageant as a political campaign, not a beauty contest.
“Miss America is not a beauty pageant,” says Debra Cantoni, the executive director of the Miss New York State organization, based on Staten Island. “They’re looking at young women who are interested in education, in developing a platform.”
Other states — we’re looking at you, Miss Tennessee — concentrate their efforts on hair, posture and killer curves, but the Miss New York office focuses on intellect.
“We do mock interviews with our contestants — they’re always looking at current events,” says Cantoni. “They know what’s going on in the media, (and they) read the newspapers and watch the nightly news programs.”
As a result, New York contestants are better prepared for the all important pre-show interview. It’s not enough anymore for a contestant to say she supports world peace. So when this year’s Miss New York, Kira Kazantsev, was asked about Ray Rice and domestic violence, the Hofstra University graduate didn’t flinch on the current-events topic of the week.
“In the United States, the justice system is driving the getaway car for abusers,” she said.
Nailed it!
Last year’s winner, Nina Davuluri, spoke intelligently about diversity. The 2013 Miss New York, Mallory Hagan, spoke about child abuse.
Cantoni wasn’t surprised that all three won the pageant.
“I have to say that the last three Miss New Yorks had extraordinary interviews,” she said.
Pageant queens of years past agree that New York’s media-savvy, workaholic culture forces would-be winners from the Empire State to up their game, which prepares them for the rigors of the Atlantic City contest.
Kazantsev “had to be a smart girl to get through that interview,” says former Miss Black USA Elaine Swann, who has 30 years of pageant experience.
Swann said Kazantsev reminded her of what she had to go through during her own time as a contestant.
“In order to become competitive in New York, I had to become way more well-rounded and well-versed in world issues, I really did,” says Swann. “The women tend to be a little more fierce.”
Fierce and unique. When it came time for the talent portion of the evening, Kazantsev, 23, sang “Happy” and accompanied herself with a red Solo cup for percussion.
In the primped and permed world of Miss America, it was crazy — crazy enough to work.
Individuality and intelligence are relatively new things on the circuit.
In fact, Miss America was originally titled the Inter-City Beauty Contest, and the first winners were given Golden Mermaid trophies. The first queen, Margaret Gorman, was billed as “the most beautiful bathing girl in America.”
In the 1950s and ’60s, Southern winners were the norm. From 1951 through 1971, for example, eight winners came from the Deep South, where the definition of female attractiveness was not expected to include rocket science.
But now the contest officially treats itself as a “one of the nation’s leading achievement programs” for “empowering young women to achieve their personal and professional goals, while providing a forum in which to express their opinions, talent and intelligence.” The closest the Miss America Organization comes to using the term “beauty” is describing its racy swimsuit competition as “fitness.”
The rest of the country needs to get the message that it takes more than old-fashioned ideals of femininity to win the tiara.
“Many states have a reputation for not selecting the contestant who is the ‘total package,’ ” says Valerie Hayes, a Houston-based pageant coach and former beauty queen. “It might be time for those states to reevaluate that strategy.”
Or they can keep getting schooled by future Miss New Yorks.