The New Miss America Will Let the Contestants Speak, but Who Will Hear Them Over All This Drama?

After months of internal strife that bubbled over into very public spats, the Miss America pageant on September 9 will attempt to put a fresh face on the nearly 98-year-old organization—if anyone will listen.

by KENZIE BRYANT

AUGUST 30, 2018 12:00 PM

Cara Mund, newly crowned as Miss America 2018, photographed at the Boardwalk Hall Arena on September 10, 2017 in Atlantic City. By Donald Kravitz/Getty Images.

For weeks now, Miss America has been talking. Reigning queen Cara Mund has made headlines for accusing the organization’s new leaders of bullying her. Gretchen Carlson (Miss America 1989) and Regina Hopper (Miss Arkansas 1983), two of those leaders, have responded to Mund and the former pageant winners supporting her, all while promising changes to the pageant that will bring it into the 21st century, almost 18 years late.

When the national pageant finally airs on September 9, the Miss America hopefuls will get their chance to speak, too—more than they ever have before. Among the biggest changes to the two-hour telecast is a new segment in which contestants will talk, allowing the women to introduce themselves to the judges beyond what Carlson and Hopper call the “gotcha question.” As in, the one that makes “half the public mad at them no matter how they answer it—like, ‘Are you for or against gun control? Are you for or against Donald Trump?’ [It’s] the questions that nobody can answer,” as Hopper puts it.

To that end, judges this year—though selected, per usual, from entertainment and entrepreneurship fields—were chosen for “their ability to have conversations with these young women,” Hopper tells Vanity Fair. “So your set of judges aren’t just people who are showing up to hand a score to a candidate based upon her performance. They’re there to learn who these young women are and engage with them,” Carlson adds.

Chris Harrison, who’s hosted the show eight times since 2005 in addition to his Bachelor-franchise duties, is out; Carrie Ann Inaba, a Dancing with the Stars judge, and E! personality Ross Mathews will take his place. The new judges, Carlson explains, will call back to the show’s theme, which is to “honor the women who have participated in our program through all the decades.” (Inaba previously worked as a choreographer for the pageant.)

The swimsuit portion, as it’s been widely reported, is also no longer. “Our attempts, and the board’s attempts, and this organization’s attempts now moving forward are to make Miss America relevant for the year in which we’re in,” Carlson says. “Miss America has always been emblematic of where women are in history and in culture over the last 97 years, and so we feel that women shouldn’t have to walk around in four-inch heels and a bikini to be able to win scholarships.”

They should, on the other hand, “be able to show their leadership skills and how smart they are and what they wanna be in the world.” The guiding principle of this year’s broadcast is the idea that the women are competing for the job of Miss America spokesperson. She’s always traveled every few days to a new event, a new appearance, a new state following the coronation, and that won’t change. But the job aspect will be more immediate on the telecast. For example, Hopper offers that “we all know that galas are used to raise money, so evening wear will now have the component of being able to say, ‘Here’s who I am, and here’s how I want to advance my social-impact initiative through the year.’”

The changes gesture at making a more watchable show as well as doing right by the women who participate in the competition. Reality television, which has exploded in the same era that Miss America’s audience has shrunk, is rarely any more progressive than a pageant—the fact that Chris Harrison participated in both should be evidence alone. But at least with The Bachelor and its ilk, viewers have a person—albeit an edited one—to root for. Now that Miss Americas are allowed to speak, and speak extensively, these contestants and the audience may get the same courtesy.

After years of sinking ratings, an unfortunate link in the public imagination to the formerly Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant (to which Miss America is not at all connected), and a half century of attacks from feminists and moralists alike, the Miss America pageant is, logically, reimagining itself as a way to get the nearly 98-year-old institution up to snuff with the times.

So, why is everyone so mad?

From left, Carlson wins the Miss America 1988 title in Atlantic City, NJ, Gretchen makes a guest appearance at the 2010 Miss America pageant at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino on January 30, 2010, Gretchen visits Good Morning America as the newly elected chairwoman of the Miss America board of directors on June 5, 2018.

From left, by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, by Ethan Miller/Getty Images, by Paula Lobo/ABC/Getty Images.
In the beginning, the heroes and villains seemed clearly defined. E-mails leaked to HuffPost’s Yashar Ali in December showed that then-C.E.O. Sam Haskell had spoken disparagingly about past winners, called “formers” within the organization. He discussed one woman’s weight and sex life. He responded enthusiastically to e-mails from the show’s lead writer who called the women “cunts” and once jokingly wished for one former’s death. At the time, the tide of #MeToo was swiftly rising, and Haskell was swept out to sea.

To replace him as president and C.E.O., the board chose a former member, Hopper. In the August before the story broke, Hopper had flown to Los Angeles to show the Miss America Organization’s (M.A.O.) production partner, Dick Clark Productions, the disconcerting e-mails from Haskell. She went alongside Brent Adams, a former employee of Haskell’s who had dated Mallory Hagan, Miss America 2013. Hagan was the subject of many of the disparaging e-mails. Adams had told HuffPost that he believed Haskell wanted him to date his daughter instead, and was taking it out on Hagan in private e-mails. Haskell did not respond to a request for comment.

Rather than address Haskell’s alleged behavior, M.A.O. served Adams a cease-and-desist letter; “shortly after” viewing and investigating the e-mails, Dick Clark Productions severed ties with the organization.

The board installed Carlson as its chairwoman not even two weeks later. A former Miss America, Carlson had recently made headlines as the first former Fox News employee to sue Roger Ailes for alleged sexual harassment. (Ailes denied all allegations.) She had also stood up to Haskell, as shown in some of the leaked e-mails. Carlson seemed like an unimpeachable choice. She and Hopper had eight months to make over Miss America and introduce it to its namesake country whose interest in the competition had waned over the years. (Global Road Entertainment’s involvement was announced in June.)

Carlson and Hopper were clear from the beginning that they wanted to update the show, which had long aged beyond its expiration date. In early June, the board announced it had voted to remove the swimsuit portion of the show, a segment that accounted for only 15 percent of the judges’ vote, but a massive amount of the pageant’s bad press. Just watch Carlson herself, suited up in a pink one-piece, walk across the stage in 1989 and silently smile while the announcer informs the crowd that “Gretchen Elizabeth Carlson is working toward a bachelor’s degree in organizational behavior, and hopes for a doctorate in law at Harvard.” It’s almost dystopian.

Back in 1993, chief executive Leonard Horn told The New York Times, “We are not stupid. We are very sensitive to the fact that the swimsuit competition has always been our Achilles’ heel. The swimsuit competition has been controversial since the early 1920s, but it’s been retained because the majority of the people like it.” But by June of this year, when Carlson went on Good Morning America to announce swimsuit’s demise, the tide had clearly turned. “Goodbye, Swimsuit Competition. Hello, ‘Miss America 2.0.,’” one headline read. “Miss America is getting rid of the swimsuit competition. It’s a start,” read another.

And then, weeks later, came the shake-ups. Infighting on the board came to a head in the first week of July. Four members resigned after only a few months on the job, with one calling the board “incredibly toxic” in Page Six, and another claiming that “good-faith attempts to practice oversight were characterized as destructive, hostile, and/or unappreciative” by Carlson and Hopper. Two members said they had not “voluntarily” left as had been suggested. On another note, some members felt they had been misled in the vote to get rid of the swimsuit competition.

Carlson and Hopper offered their side of the story in statements. Twenty-two state pageant reps responded by signing a “vote of no confidence” petition calling for the entire board to resign. Thirty formers signed another letter in support of Carlson and the board (at least one woman reneged her signature, claiming she did not get a chance to review the letter). Every other day, it seemed, some new grievance appeared in print either from a former winner or a state affiliate, none of them about the changes that had been made to the pageant itself apparently, but the inner workings of the organization that had previously been invisible to the public.

And then Cara Mund, Miss America 2017, delivered the pièce de résistance on August 17, less than a month before the telecast was scheduled to air. In a five-page open letter addressed to former winners, Mund accused Carlson and Hopper’s team of bullying her by boxing her out of interviews, assigning her pre-determined talking points (example: “Miss America is relevant”), and making disparaging comments about her clothes. Carlson, addressing Mund directly in a statement posted to Twitter, denied the accusations and said that sponsors had dropped out because of her actions. Pageant message boards erupted, and titleholders took to morning programs as a show of support. Nineteen formers called for the board’s resignation, with a special focus on Carlson.

Finalists in the 1935 Miss America Pageant participate in the swimsuit competition portion in front of a row of judges in Atlantic City. From Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

ABC, which has aired the pageant since 2011 and whose contract is up this year, has not responded to the internal turmoil (ABC declined to comment for this piece). But what was already going to be a high-stakes year for Miss America has now become much more dramatic, with much of the pageant community allied against the people who have tried to update it—and, by doing so, maybe save it.

So far, Hopper, Carlson, and the rest of the board have resisted the call to step down. But spending their days addressing whatever new crisis pops up from state affiliates or titleholders does not leave a lot of extra time to meet production needs. With 10 days until Carlson and Hopper’s Miss America attempts to prove its relevance to the world, everything depends on the women at the heart of the program—the Miss America hopefuls who actually get to speak for it on television.

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/08/the-new-miss-america-will-let-contestants-speak-drama