Guest Columnist: Here I am, Miss America wannabe

I must begin this column with a confession. I used to be one of those girls. Dare I say it? One of those pageant girls. You know the type -- those perfectly-coifed-hair, vaseline-induced-smile girls, those able-to-walk-in-five-inch-stiletto-heels-while-answering-the-questions-of-eight-glaring-judges-girls. Please don't tell anyone.\nSo the weekend the folks at TV Guide informed me I would be privy to the 2001 Miss America pageant, I wasn't sure how to react. The pageant system leaves a nasty aftertaste, yet I found myself turning to ABC to see if Miss Ohio was anyone I'd beaten in the past.\nI wanted to change the channel. I told myself the 300th rerun of "Jackass" on MTV would be more entertaining, yet I couldn't help but notice that Miss Hawaii was planning on dancing the hula for her talent, and so, I allowed myself to be sucked in.\nThere were quite a few changes to the pageant this year. First, they dropped the word "pageant." So I guess I will too. Now it's just Miss America. Second, they concentrated more on the girls' personalities as opposed to their, um, personalities. The television audience barely even caught two seconds of them onscreen for the swimsuit competition (although God knows they could have been standing on their heads for the judges off-camera.)\nWhy couldn't they have cut my stage time to two seconds when I was parading around a cattle barn at the Miss Cuyahoga County Fair pageant in a swimsuit from Target and hooker heels? I wasn't even a runner-up in that one! I felt cheated. I think I actually huffed out loud. But then, I recalled the chuckle I got listening to other contenders bragging about how much their custom-made swimsuits cost and then complimenting me on mine. (I told them I got it from a local retailer.)\nI kept watching, and two hours turned into three. They made another change that I didn't like at all. While all 10 semi-finalists had to compete in swimsuit, only the final five got to compete in talent. I'm sure the contestants were so happy to learn they couldn't even show off their creative abilities if their butt was too jiggly.\nI let my mind wander as Miss Hawaii, still in competition, danced her hula. I recalled how nasty the contestants actually are to each other. I always laugh when they talk about what close friends they are. I laughed even harder when the final five were asked to comment on the "pageant look" and all five of them, in perfectly coifed hair and stiletto heels, told host Marie Osmond that the thought was absolutely absurd. "There is no pageant look," said Miss Louisiana as she scowled from accidentally tasting the vaseline on her teeth.\nIn the end, Miss Hawaii hula'd her way down the runway as Miss America 2001. For a brief moment, I felt "the bug" as we girls in "the biz" like to call it. I wanted to be on that runway with Donnie and Marie singing to me. I wanted to know if the boy band O-Town sounded as awful live as they did on the television. I wanted to re-invent the strategy to always come in second place so you can keep winning scholarship money yet still compete (once you win local, you're done until the state.)\nAnd then a shocking realization jolted me back to reality -- I am 24. I am too old.