Beauty Pageant Gets Uglier?
by Vera H-C ChanMay 11, 2009
We've heard of puppet governments and Manchurian candidates...but a shadow beauty pageant winner?
As has been over-reported in the Buzz Log and elsewhere, all Carrie Prejean wanted was the chance to win a custom-made tiara, a New York Film Academy scholarship, and that Jessica Simpson swimsuit wardrobe. Instead, a politically explosive question landed on her rhinestone-encrusted lap, and she became a brief lightning-rod on the talk show circuit.
Just when Miss California's time as a sideshow attraction in the media circus was up, leaked lingerie photos from her past inspired yet another round of Web-ogling: Prejean got double the amount of Web lookups than during pageant week.
The briefs-only pictures gave California pageant officials the chance to purse their lips disapprovingly and milk the pseudo-drama by declaring a Monday press conference to announce whether her state crown would be lost over contract violations.
And of course, the conference came and went with the decision to be made Tuesday by pageant master Donald Trump, known for forgiving errant contestants. Prejean's chances also look good, if his compliments about her body during a radio interview is any clue. Trump hadn't seen the photos yet because his people were "sending" them to him...via Pony Express, perhaps.
But, according to E! Online, the officials have appointed a "a shadow Miss California, installing runner-up Tami Farrell as the official ambassador to the pageant's newly launched Beauty of California initiative." She'll be making appearances throughout the Golden State in a role "which sounds an awful lot like Prejean's current role."
Shadow crown-holder or not, Trump's not worried about Prejean's future, and neither are we. If she gets ousted from the Golden State, she could always head to Utah, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and about six other states that led the nation's "carrie prejean" lookups in the past 7 days: Her home state of California barely elbowed its way into 10th place. Miss Utah might want to watch her back.
