MISScellanea

A few days ago I said I’d be writing about the latest pageant gossip that you need to know about. Any guesses what it is?

Let me start with a line from the carefully scripted presentation that I and speakers with my company share with high school students across the nation: “If you wouldn’t put it on your college application or your resume, DON’T PUT IT ON THE INTERNET!”

Recently photos of a state titleholder smoking and drinking underage surfaced on the national message board. Here in Ohio there is a similar ongoing issue with a local titleholder and allegations were made against a local contestant.

How can we forget this summer when the issue made national news with the infamous Miss New Jersey, Amy Polumbo? Just last week a new interview with her was published here.

“If I could do it all over again I probably would not have competed…”

Although she said the experience was "wonderful," Polumbo said the situation has made it very hard "to keep my title and is something that follows me like a black cloud."

"The interesting thing about that situation was that the pictures had been posted before this all happened, when I was not a part of the public eye and before I knew I had a chance to be a role model," Polumbo said. "The blackmailer chose to pick two of the photos where I was celebrating with a friend on their 21st birthday, which just happened to be Halloween.

Pageant veterans should certainly know better, but it seems that contestants new to the system may not know the Amy Polumbo story, or seriousness of this issue. The trouble I have is that I understand both sides…

I’ve started to write my opinions, but I’m incredibly busy today, headed out the door for an overnight trip and still battling cold symptoms… So my thoughts and some facts and figures on drinking and sex from Lauren Hogan, whose pageant platform is “Risky Business,” will be posted tomorrow evening.