Scandalous

Difficult as it may be to believe, I was once the victim of a tabloid scandal.

Well, not exactly a tabloid. It was a full-size newspaper. Not a "daily" like they have in big cities. This one was published once a week, but it was a big paper. I know, because when I was in high school, I worked there. I was one of the crew who "stuffed" the papers so they'd be ready for delivery.

The year was 1971, and the paper was The Lapeer County Press. I was Miss Lapeer County, and I had just returned from competing in the the Miss Michigan Pageant. Everyone I worked with was as proud of me as if I'd been a member of their own family. They didn't even care that I hadn't gotten close enough to the Miss Michigan crown to see if it was real. They wanted to hear all about my experience.

But this was more than just me talking to the people at work. This was an official interview, where someone was asking questions and taking notes. It was probably my nerves that made me blurt out inappropriately, "We ate 20 pizzas!" I've regretted it ever since. That headline was taken out of context. If you read the article, you'll see that I was yammering on about how tired we were. (Have you ever tried making a good impression 24/7? It's exhausting!) I talked about how we starved ourselves--especially the day of the swimsuit competition. By the time it was over, we were punchy and hungry.

After the last evening of competition, we were all together in a room, wearing our pajamas, and pizzas were brought in--20 of them. If you read the article, you'll see that there were 38 of us, so that's really only half a pizza plus a few bites for each. But I'm from a big family. I don't think I'd ever had more than two slices of pizza to myself at one meal. I was impressed.

I am sorry that my statement paints a picture of beauty queens as ravenous vultures who can't wait until the party's over so they can bury their faces in thick, cheesy pizza. I know there was a lot of talking and laughing and letting go that night. A lot of pizza was consumed, but it was really not as bad as that scandalous headline might lead you to believe.