DREAM GIRLS

By RICHARD CORLISS

That title always had grandeur to it. "Miss America." Ah, the simple, arrogant brilliance! It suggests a prom queen who wants to become the Statue of Liberty. Now she's 75, and darned if she isn't as fresh as a Hard Copy headline.

When the Atlantic City pageant, with hosts Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford, airs this Saturday on NBC, some ambitious young woman--one of the 50,000 who try out each year--will realize the gossamer dream that last year enveloped Heather Whitestone, the first deaf Miss America. But in the months leading to that night, the pageant has been slapped with unseemly controversy. A Miss Maryland runner-up charges she was denied her state title because of vote rigging--and attorney Alan Dershowitz is helping press her case. Other state runners-up are vexed because a woman who had lost the Miss New Jersey competition four times decamped to Delaware and won the title there. The Virginia delegate was stripped of her title after claims that she inflated her credentials. And throughout America the anguished debate roils on: Should the swimsuit competition be dropped?

Scandal is the coin of contemporary celebrity; it keeps the public interested. It makes Miss America a current affair. Funny how people have really cared about the pageant's politics: in 1945 the naming of the first Jewish Miss America, Bess Myerson; in 1979 the dumping of Bert Parks, the show's emcee for 25 years; in 1984 the dethroning of Vanessa Williams, the first winner of color, after sexually provocative photos surfaced. Race, creed, age, all have clouded the show. But like the winner at the moment of coronation--brandishing a mile-wide smile as she sobs on the edge of both the runway and hysteria--the pageant proves that pretty can be messy. It serves as a kitsch microcosm of a conflicted country. Miss America is America.

This year we can be a part of the pageant. And not just by guessing the winner and dissing the losers. In a plebiscite, the I-can't-believe-it's-a-beauty-pageant pageant is letting viewers decide whether the swimsuit competition will be retained. Before every commercial during the first half of the three-hour show, two 900 numbers will appear--one for yes votes, one for no. The tally will be updated throughout the program. Normally the swimsuit competition is the first event of the evening; this year it will be the last--unless it is eliminated. Which it won't be. Straw polls indicate wide support. And 42 of the contestants are for it. Says Emily Orton, Miss Oregon: "The media can make you feel a lot more naked than a swimsuit. So if you can't be comfortable competing in this, you won't feel comfortable being Miss America."

No question that the contestants must parade as objects--not sex objects, exactly, since the bathing gear they are made to wear is about as revealing as a cassock, but surely as objects--for ogling, for censure, for pity. Lee Meriwether, Miss America 1955, recalls her agony in a one piece: "I was dying a thousand deaths. I've never had people stare at me like that, and with binoculars! I'll be thrilled if they can get rid of it." Says this year's Miss Montana, Amanda Granrude: "We shouldn't have women in a veiled strip show." Even Leonard Horn, who runs the Miss America Organization, says, "I personally cannot rationalize it." Eager to italicize the scholarship program that gives more than $24 million a year to contestants, Horn sees the swimsuit segment as a tacky relic of Miss America's childhood.

Seventy-five years is an eon in pop culture. In 1921 movies were silent, radio was an infant, television a dream, alcohol consumption a crime. There were few awards in fields of frivol: Oscars, Tonys, Grammys didn't exist. But some people in Atlantic City thought they should give a prize and a title to a pretty girl. The town was the East Coast's premier seaside resort, so she probably ought to wear a bathing suit. And hoping to extend the summer season, the pageant's creators scheduled it for after Labor Day.

Early on, the thing had a sweet, slapdash air. In 1933 Marian Bergeron, Miss Connecticut, was summoned offstage and a producer said, "My God, she's it!" She was handed a strapless white satin gown and told to take off her bathing suit and change--right there in the wings. Bergeron, now 77 but a decorous 15 at the time, refused: "So two chaperones built a little screen around me, and I put on the gown. Six boys and two girls put a gorgeous robe over my shoulder--it had a train half the size of our living room--and the band played Stars and Stripes Forever." When the flash cameras started popping like metallic champagne corks, "I felt like I'd been hit with a stun gun."

Bergeron may have been a Bambi in the headlights, but today's Heathers-in-waiting are primed for the media glare. As the 50 alighted from a chartered plane last Monday for the start of their Atlantic City siege, they filed into the airport lounge, taking the room one high-heeled step after another. Posing outside en masse, they lined up like Rockettes. Their collective smile could give an onlooker severe retinal damage.

Yet for all the perkiness and primping, the look is small-town, polyester. This is Sears, not Saks. The women would be prettier with smarter clothes and hipper hairdos. A few display true glamour and grace, but in general this is a triumph of starch over sizzle. The earnestness with which the women sell themselves would make them comfy at a Mary Kay Cosmetics convention. They radiate not fantastic beauty but fanatical effort. For some, striving to be universally liked can trigger the scent of desperation. Horn says, "They are interviewing for a job--the job of Miss America," and the pressure shows. It doesn't help that they are chaperoned and shadowed by so-called State Traveling Companions and two hostesses to a contestant. They are prisoners of the fame they seek.

And they go to great lengths in seeking it. Linda Yueh, a Harvard Ph.D. candidate and Georgetown law student, was denied the Maryland crown (though she had won the early competitions) after a wrangle over her eligibility. Last week, still hoping to be onstage in Atlantic City, she sued the state and national pageants. Dershowitz, who took time out from jogging beside the O.J. limo to advise Yueh, waxes apoplectic at the injustice: "The Miss America contest should not turn into the World Wrestling Federation. We don't want Miss America to become the Quiz Show of the 1990s." A New Jersey judge ruled that Yueh could not take part in the pageant but might still recover damages.

Of those who make it to Atlantic City, some have been pageanteers most of their life. Jennifer Curry, Miss Iowa, started when she was nine, was crowned Miss Iowa National Teenager and competed to be America's Miss Charm. Girls get the Miss America bug for all sorts of reasons: self-improvement, blond ambition, because it's there. In the pursuit of distant goals, kids can be wonderfully stubborn: some forge themselves into Olympic figure skaters, others into masters of the 18-ft. jump shot. The pageant hopeful may have this doggedness. She can't get prettier, but she can hone her talent, polish her poise. By the time she makes the top 50, she has become a curious hybrid: the professional amateur.

The women ("girls," in pageant parlance) grow savvier with each local contest. Many wear Firm Grip, a sports adhesive, to keep their swimsuits from riding up. Miss Vermont eats bananas to steady her nerves. Rebecca Gray, Miss Indiana, confides, "I have really fine hair, so I fill in my hairline with dark eye shadow." Even these beauty tips can't help them compete forever. There is an age limit, a kind of Menudo Line, of 25 for contestants. Elizabeth McIntyre, Miss West Virginia, is 24, and when she won her state title, she says, she felt "relieved. I was aging out this year." It's a phrase often used by the senior Misses.

Brains are part of the beauty now. Four of this year's 50 plan a career in law, four in medicine. Many plan to teach. Miss Massachusetts, a junior at Harvard, lists as her ambition "U.S. Senator." Four would make a mark in broadcast journalism. Miss Illinois has an edge here; she looks like a young Diane Sawyer. And Pat Robertson, take note: Miss North Dakota lists her ambition as "news anchor for Christian network."

The most popular business to pursue is show business. Get ready for dramatic recitations and piano flourishes, tap dancing and clog dancing. To ensure again that TV viewers will be exposed to more opera on this one show than in the rest of the year, five of the 50 promise a "classical vocal." Classical, perhaps; classic, perhaps not. To have a "talent" is not always to be talented. Then again, anticipating the mangling of a high C is one of the evil joys of pageant watching.

In recent years, in a nod to modernity and political correctness, the pageant has emphasized the contestants' dedication to social betterment. And they'd better be dedicated; each is required to speak on a do-good theme--a "platform" that will serve as her stump speech should she win the crown. This week's wannabes will plump for such causes as aging with dignity (Miss Hawaii), youth-violence intervention (Maine), alternatives to underage drinking (Nebraska), organ-tissue donation (Texas) and motivating at-risk children through music (Alabama). Miss California will speak in favor of sexual abstinence.

Perhaps one of these inspirational chats will launch the career of a budding politician (moderate to rabid Republican, we're guessing). But what usually comes across is the falseness, not of the contestants forced to reach for cheerful profundity, but of the format. Says humorist Harry Shearer, host of the syndicated weekly radio treasure Le Show and an avid trawler in the backwaters of pop culture: "I believe that if the serious guys on television had to discuss current affairs the way Miss America contestants do--gussied up in evening wear while an orchestra plays Isn't She Lovely?, and showing us their backsides after they finish--we'd have a better world."

Leonard Horn thinks the world of Miss America is fine as is. "I'm sick and tired of people not understanding the value of this program," he fumes. "In a world that has nothing but troubles, this is something pretty goddam good." Horn means pretty goddam wholesome, but he's right. Miss America is good--if you remember that it's a once-a-year TV show that allows viewers to make bar bets on the status of young womanhood. The pageant is good for drama and giggles on a Saturday night. Nestled on the September schedule amid the Jerry Lewis Telethon and Monday Night Football, the Miss America show shares with those made-for-TV spectacles the lure of unpredictable thrills and gaffes, adventure and ennui. It's gaudy, it's fake, it's real, it's live! We hate it. We love it!

--Reported by Andrea Sachs/Atlantic City

With reporting by ANDREA SACHS/ATLANTIC CITY