In California: Practicing "Swimsuit" for Atlantic City

By Nancy Griffin

On the Betamax a replay of her first triumph unwinds in glorious technicolor. The camera zooms in on pink fingernails fluttering near pale skin as her face crumples with joy and disbelief. The weepy, departing queen struggles to fix the crown on her successor's head. As a recorded chorus serenades, "She's a miracle, she could be Miss America. . . the one that we ado-o-o-re," the winner grips her scepter and hurtles toward the runway at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium.

All that happened back on June 24. Watching it again only a week before she will have to knock 'em dead at the final contest in Atlantic City, Christine Louise Acton has to laugh. But nervously. She is 23. On June 24 she struck a bargain with the Miss America Pageant system. She accepted a job as Miss California, 1978. She knew it would take up most of her time, patience, energy and privacy for a whole year. In return for a chunk of the $1 million plus in scholarship money given by Gillette, Kellogg, Campbell Soup and other companies, she would dutifully work for the greater glory of the Golden State as a sublime slice of American Pie.

And here she is with three members of California's Miss America or Bust Committee: Charles Grebmeier, 37, Cindy Walker, 42, and Charlotte Randolph, 55. Christine is the product. The other three are packagers. All four watch the rerun exactly the way football teams watch movies of last week's game, to note mistakes, to improve performance. Says Christine when the film is over: "It's a good thing I'm getting a new talent gown. That one is too tight in the rear end."

"We don't want to make her over," Cindy, executive director of Miss California, observes. But the relentless aim of the group is to help Christine acquire what the judges' guide describes as "the necessary beauty and wholesomeness to appeal to the American public." The variables considered include talent, hair, makeup, gowns, poise and walk, and conversation. The Betamax affirms that where talent is concerned, Christine should have the contest pretty well sewed up. Her rendering of Bartok's Hungarian Peasant Songs on the flute is professional, pure and austere when compared with the frothier offerings of other contestants. But in many ways she is like a whole new breed of Miss America aspirants, far from a beauty-queen type. Tall and girl-next-door pretty, she is a pale brunette who in no way resembles the blonde, golden-bronzed California beauties of imagination. Says a friend: "She'd look ridiculous beside a surfboard." She hates makeup and the whole virginal cult of the body beautiful that underlies Miss America.

Christine is long past her "hippie stage." At the University of Redlands, where she studied history and music, she was rushed by a sorority that plundered fraternity houses for jockey shorts. But she ducked the sisterhood in favor of serious music and a semester studying in Salzburg. She frankly sees the exposure of Miss America as a means of deliverance from the grueling jobs that helped her work her way through school. "I want to be with a major symphony," Christine declares. "Cocktail waitressing isn't going to get me there."

Ever since the women's movement began sneering at Miss America, the pageant has been nervous, trying to keep traditionalists content while courting the interest of modern young women. Some ambiguity is inevitable. Christine is liberated by any standard, adamant that the public perceive her as a "woman who can take care of herself." When a reporter asks for her vital statistics, she looks him square in the eye and says, "I don't know. I don't even know how much I weigh." But she slips into the word "girls" when lapsing into pageant talk. And she will not comment on the Equal Rights Amendment because, she says, she does not feel well enough informed.

And so the training goes through weeks of sometimes tearful self-improvement and self-display. There are trips to Palo Alto to work with her orchestrator. Hairdresser John Bettiol works over her for hours, striving for that perfect balance between wholesomeness and sophistication. He coaxes Christine's permed frizz into a Cosmo-mane of curls, daubing her face with goo and powder. Sneaking a peek in the mirror, she is aghast. Her mouth is caked in red sludge. "It should have blood dripping from it," she jokes. The photographer is unimpressed. What Christine hates most is the fake eyelashes.

Classes in San Francisco's House of Charm are scheduled. An eye makeup coach strokes a ghoulish green ring around the candidate's left eye. Christine tries to match it on the right one. Only now and then does she rebel. "I got so mad at my eyelashes yesterday," she declares, "I flushed them down the toilet."

There is also runway walking. Christine's arms must not swing too much, a habit acquired "from all those years playing flute in high school marching bands." The judges, she learns, may frown on her droopy right shoulder. At J.C. Penney's, Christine makes for the dressing room with a slinky green gown. She beckons Charlotte for a second opinion, her ex pression uncertain, one arm modestly shielding the bodice. "My mom used to buy me bras that were too big," she mourns. "She said I'd grow into them. I didn't."

That would once have been a problem. But now the Miss America Pageant, Inc., officially discourages a va-va-va-voom image. The long strut past the judges in abbreviated beach costume is primly referred to as "swimsuit." But it still counts for one-sixth of the total points in the contest. And Christine will still have to put on a highly structured coral-hued number and parade in high heels before a fully clothed audience and a panel of judges. "I always said I'd never do it," she admits, "but it's really no big deal."

Slender and firm at 5 ft. 7 in., she has no worries about bowlegs or "fanny over hang," the bane of many bathing beauties past. In fact, quite another sort of disaster threatens. She does not eat. She cannot sleep. And she loses a crucial 15 Ibs. What to do? More sleep is Charlotte's prescription. But the answer to Christine's problem lies in another notorious nemesis of Miss America girls, her love life. Then she gets a few long and understanding letters from her boyfriend, a second-year man at U.S.C. Medical School whose support of her Miss America effort is important to Christine. Miracle. She eats. She begins to look more like Miss California again.

By now Charles has headed off for Atlantic City, where he will harness his zeal by acting as associate producer of the Miss America Pageant. An interior designer by profession, he is one of 250,000 people who work hard for the system each year without pay. "Just say the pageant is my golf game," explains Charles when asked why he does it. From Atlantic City, too, comes intriguing word about some of the other contestants. Miss Mississippi, Christine learns, was a twirler in her band at "Ole Miss" and a fraternity sweetheart, and is the proud owner of a poodle named Po-Co who is her jogging mate.

Wardrobe has all been laid out and labeled for each step she takes in Atlantic City. Christine has chosen to play not only the Bartok but also John Philip Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever on the piccolo. "Bartok and Sousa would roll in their graves," Christine grins. But she wants to play the piccolo on TV in hopes of winning a piccolo seat with a symphony.

Half of America may writhe at the very mention of Miss America. But Christine knows that the other half will be watching her on TV that night, pleased by a familiar drama with its comforting suggestion, not entirely buried in unspoken sex and overt commerce, of a continual cycle of nurturing, of youth pliable and respectful, learning something, at least, from previous generations. The phone rings. It is Charles from Atlantic City. "Have you got your eyelashes on?" he asks.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.