It’s safe to say this wasn’t the best week for Miss America — the pageant or the person.
“I must’ve aged 10 years over the past 24 hours,”Kira Kazantsev wrote in her blog on Tuesday night. On Monday, not long after becoming the third consecutive Miss New York to win the crown, Kazantsev, 23, also became the subject ofa story from the website Jezebel. An unnamed person had accused her of promotinghazing at Hofstra University’s Alpha Phi sorority. “Over the past 24 hours, I have experienced cyber-bullying, hatred, and judgment unlike ever before,” Kazantsev continued. “People write you off at a moment’s notice, simply rejoicing in the fact that you might’ve done something wrong.” Writing off Miss America — the pageant — may seem easy, given the last few days. Just before the hazing story came to light, John Oliver, HBO’s late-night news satirist, skewered the Linwood-based Miss America Organization for vastly overstating its scholarship contributions.
The “Last Week Tonight” host said show staff found no evidence the scholarships awarded to contestants amounted to any number near the $45 million claimed. And people were paying attention. The Chicago Tribune reported that in just two days, Oliver's suggestion for viewers to donate to other scholarship programs resulted in an influx of $25,000 to the city's Society of Women Engineers.
For a pageant that already suffered from an image problem – the swimsuit competition hasn’t exactly helped — Oliver’s debunking session and the hazing allegations against Kazantsev seemed to indicate a swift downward spiral.
The questions many observers are asking now: Can Miss America recover from yet another set of PR blows? And how will all of this impact the pageant's current home, Atlantic City, which is facing its own share of public relations and financial crises?
Scholarships and ‘solvency’
The hazing allegations forced Miss America to regroup, but the scholarship story appeared to be more damning. After all, the organization trumpets that it is the largest provider of scholarships for women. “That’s why those women, many of them, enter the pageant,” says Karen Kessler, a crisis communications expert at Evergreen Partners in Warren, who has represented the Giants, Jets and more than a few politicians, also serving as a technical adviser to TV series "The Good Wife" and "Nashville."
Addressing the pageant-faithful on stage at Boardwalk Hall this month, Sam Haskell, CEO of the Miss America Organization, said the cash-strapped pageant once used would-be scholarship money to cover office expenses. Back on network TV and returned to Atlantic City, he said, the pageant had regained both “relevance” and “solvency.” Yet when it comes to money, the pageant and its contestants aren’t the only stakeholders. “There’s the people of New Jersey,” says Kessler. The competition arrived in Atlantic City just as neighboring Trump Plaza was preparing to close, becoming the fourth casino to shut down this year. The state, through the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, has put millions of dollars toward underwriting the pageant’s production costs.
After the Sept. 14 broadcast, pageant officials beamed about Miss America’s No. 1 spot in the Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings. But TV ratings declined. Last year the broadcast drew 8.6 million viewers. This year: 7.1 million. Though Miss America’s contract with the CRDA and Boardwalk Hall is up after next year’s show, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and Atlantic City officials have expressed support for the pageant remaining there. Miss America began in the fall of 1921 as a strategy to lure business back to the beach. Does the flailing casino town now have a choice in the matter? As casinos falter, Atlantic City’s current mantra is to boost “non-gaming” activity. “New Jersey and Atlantic City once again look like they got a very short end of the stick,” Kessler says. “If it’s all about nostalgia, the question is, at what price?”
Mixed messages
If Miss America’s modern-day goal is to “empower women,” a story associating the titleholder with poor treatment of women provides an easy way to torpedo the mission. Appearing on “Good Morning America” after the Jezebel story broke, Kazantsev, whose pageant platform advances domestic violence awareness, denied hazing was the reason why she was asked to leave the sorority last year, saying the cause was an email in which she joked about the practice. But she admitted to participating in a larger campus culture of hazing.
“What can be more damaging?” Kessler says. “It is the essence of sort of everything that they say they don’t stand for.” Kazantsev said the hardest question she had to answer on the morning show was about what she would say to young girls regarding her behavior at the sorority. "I'd tell them it's OK to make mistakes," she said. "You know, that's life." Yet as host Lara Spencer delivered the query to the smooth-talking spokeswoman, for just a beat, the pageant queen’s eyes looked distant.While the Miss America Organization issued a statement praising Kazantsev’s “transparency” about her termination from the sorority, it is still unclear when pageant officials learned about her history with Alpha Phi. One of the requirements for contestants is that they fulfill “character criteria.” Kazantsev rejects any notion that she promoted verbal or physical abuse.
There is (so far) no video of her participating in any hazing activities. Unlike Vanessa Williams’ nude photos — plans for their publication in Penthouse magazine prompted her Miss America resignation in 1984 — there is no visual evidence of a violation. “I don’t think that this is grounds for dethroning,” says sociologist and pageant-watcher Hilary Levey Friedman, a former judge of the Miss New Jersey pageant. Her mother, Pamela Eldred, was Miss America 1970. Though advancing the stereotype of sorority “mean girls” isn’t the stated aim of Miss America, the ritual has produced a kind of sorority identity, she says. “The Miss America pageant has a history with the sorority program in the U.S.,” says Levey Friedman. “That’s why it’s called a sisterhood.” The names used to describe preliminary competition groupings — Mu, Alpha and Sigma — come from Mu-Alpha-Sigma, a Miss America sorority organized in 1940.
Even as the hazing allegations may damage Kazantsev’s credibility as a national spokeswoman, Levey Friedman doesn’t think they will destroy her year. “There was a time when Miss America was held up as this totally perfect ideal,” she says. “What Miss America’s trying to do is say, we’re relatable, we all make mistakes.”
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