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Wisconsin sees roses…for Miss America

Before Miss Indiana was crowned Miss America 2009, TV viewers watched and envied the bodies of 15 in-shape young women strutting across the stage. How do these college-aged women keep their fabulous figures while juggling classes and life in the dead of winter?

The new queen, Katie Stam went home with a $50,000 scholarship and $1,000 for a preliminary swimsuit and fitness award. This basically was a check for having the hottest body. How does the new queen stay fit? You might be surprised.

On Miss America’s official website Katie cites a favorite hobby as working out on a Power Plate!

According to Power Plate’s manufacturers, if you stand on the machine’s vibrating plates for 10 minutes a day and three times a week, you will lose weight, increase bone density and improve your overall health. The whole idea is trying to keep balance on the vibrating platform while you tense and release your muscles 30 to 50 times per second during strength-training moves like squats or bicep curls. There are more than 30 private studios and fitness centers across the nation offering total-body training classes which typically last 25 minutes.

Unfortunately, most gyms still do not carry Power Plates, and many experts are weary of them. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get a Miss America body. Read More »

I have been told I’m a team leader. I have been told that I am a social butterfly and a friend maker. I have been told that my glass is always half full. So why, oh why, do I despise the overly enthusiastic so very much?

I’ve noticed this about myself since elementary school. I just can’t be THAT excited ALL of the time. But some people can be.

You know the type…

She shows up to class early on the first day and sits in the front row. She asks irrelevant questions and smiles as if she’s just won Miss America. She screeches when she sees a little dog on the street and most sentences are prefaced by the phrase:

“Ohhhhhhh Myyyyyyyyy Goddddddd!!”.

She’s chipper. And more or less, she’s a good person. I mean, these kinds of people have never really crossed me, per se. They don’t steal, they don’t hit old ladies, nor do they instigate drama. The only thing I suppose they do wrong is….well…drive me f*cking nuts.

I’m not an antisocial creep. I’m not an unhappy person. In fact, I’m pretty happy go lucky! So why do these overly enthusiastic people me make want to kick and scream?

And is anyone else out there with me?

So another Miss America pageant has come and gone without anyone really noticing.

Maybe it’s because we have other fantastic outlets to judge people, such as, say, Rock of Love, I Love New York, and the classic and oh-so-classy Flavor of Love (I’m detecting a “love” theme here, VH1).

Unpredictability is what sells, any idiot can see that. So in order to boost ratings, TLC made its own reality show about this year’s Miss America contestents, Miss America: Reality Check, which shows us that shockingly, some of these girls aren’t so bright.

I mean, that’s surprising, right? A not smart hot girl. Wow. And isn’t it just a little humorous that they can’t even bother to be creative with a title to try and pull viewers?

Reality Check is a little too formulaic for the typical American audience. We get it already. 50 Barbies prance around in eveningwear and bikinis, trying to show us that their baton-twirling or vocal stylings can change the world. They get narrowed down, the 4 prettiest, blondest Southern girls stay on and Texas always wins. Those of us who live in the North ponder what our lives could have been had we been born to drawl and drink sweet tea, and then quickly remember that it’s kind of like a foreign country and snap out of it.

This year’s winner was Miss Michigan, Kristen Haglund. That’s really the only thing I heard and remotely cared about. Finally, some good representation from the mitten… or is it? Read More »

Why on earth anyone watches beauty pageants other than to tune in and pray that the contestants fall on their asses is beyond me.

But to actually be in a beauty pageant? Nooo, but thank you.

The NYTimes reports that these contests are much more superficial than you think, and that’s not saying a whole lot. It turns out that many of these girls are duped into thinking they’re gonna win a ton of money and scholarships of some sort, but they never reap the educational or financial benefits.

Ashley Wood, a pissed-off ex Miss USA who never got the money she actually won, said,

“You are talking about an organization that is promoting itself as the largest scholarship provider for women in the world….When contestants try to collect their funds, they encounter one obstacle after another.”

These problems have something to do with all of the local and state pageants that are scattered around the country being tied under the national pageants, and apparently, local pageant winners hardly ever collect – the states could take these local pageants to court, but they have limited control over them in the first place, and to even do that would cost more than what these girls are actually owed.

One girl was even told after winning a pageant that instead of the scholarship she was promised, she could just take home some gowns!! Are you kidding me? Read More »

UPDATE 7.12.07: Click here to see the photos.

All I have to say is thank god I’m not Miss New Jersey, because who knows what people would say about my facebook pictures. For all of the publicity her facebook blackmail scandal has gotten, Amy Polumbo has managed to handle the situation with the gracefulness that apparently only a beauty queen can posses.

The first package of photos arrived last week and threatened Amy to turn in her crown or face having the photos published. The second package, containing actual prints of “scandalous” photos arrived sometime last weekend. Miss NJ won’t discuss the contents of the photos, but it has been said that they were from a drama department Cabaret bootcamp retreat. We all know that with drama comes a bit of eccentricity (and with cabaret, a bit of risqué clothing) but could there really be blackmail material from a school sponsored weekend away?

During her interview with the Today show, Amy said that there was nothing illegal happening in the pictures. And according to Polumbo’s lawyer, it isn’t the content of the photos but rather the fictitious captions that worry her a bit. And rightly so, I can’t imagine the things some people could assume from my pictures if they didn’t really understand the context. Read More »