Free She Walks in Beauty by Sarah Shankman Page B

It covers thunder thighs.
    “You’re looking wonderful,” Sally Griffin shouted to Miss Arkansas as she sucked-and-tucked above them on the runway. It was rather dazzling to be so close. “One of mine,” Sally said to Sam. Miss Arkansas beamed and waved and shot Sally a thumbs-up.
    The Inquirer shouted to Miss Colorado, one of her personal favorites. So when Miss Georgia paraded by, Sam called, “Hey, Rae Ann, looking good.”
    Rae Ann was flying. Her eyes sparkled, and her color was high.
    It was tough not to be excited. The enthusiasm in the hall was wildly contagious. The evening felt exactly like the semifinals of any sporting event—the music, the fans, the lights, the banners, the shouts, the applause, and the players themselves, pumped within an inch of their very lives.
    Sitting right at the edge of the runway, Sam almost could have reached over and touched the girls. And she found herself wanting to, they were so vibrant, so alive. And though they weren’t all beautiful, not what you might think a Miss America ought to look like (whatever that was), when she was prancing down that runway, each girl looked like she held the title to that long, narrow piece of Atlantic City real estate.
    Now here was Miss Louisiana, Lucinda Washington, Lavert’s drop-dead-gorgeous cousin. One of two black contestants, she had the queenly bearing of Jessye Norman—though she’d spot the diva a hundred and fifty pounds.
    There were bouquets of long-stemmed blondes. More brunettes. A few redheads.
    What Sam noticed most was their bodies: how tall they all were—though of course she was looking up—and how thin, with long, shapely legs, not much fanny, and considerable chests. Their heads were different, but the bodies were all by Barbie. This was it: the Role Model. The Golden Mean. Twenty-two years of age, 35-22-34, 5′7″, 117 pounds. No wonder the average American woman was perpetually dieting.
    Following the Parade of States was some banter between the emcees Phyllis George (Miss America 1971, former pro football commentator, wife of a former governor, and a fried chicken entrepreneur) and Gary Collins (NBC game show host and husband of Mary Ann Mobley, Miss America 1959).
    They introduced the reigning Miss America, Lynn Anderson, who was stunning in a low-cut dress of gold and silver. As Lynn paraded and waved to the roaring crowd, Sam, swept away by the moment, actually found herself tearing up.
    Ridiculous! Though she did remember crying along with the winner of every Miss America Pageant of her girlhood.
    Beauty pageants have always been especially popular in the South, and growing up in Atlanta, Sam had loved the Miss America Pageant even more than the Oscars. The second Saturday in September, it was timed just perfectly, right after the opening of school. She and a dozen of her friends had huddled together in their pj’s, draped over one another like so many cats on her bed before the television.
    “Yeeeeeeew! Ugly! Too fat! Look at those thighs!” they’d screamed. Or, “Wow! But get up in front of all those people, play the piano, answer questions, I’d diiiiiiie!”
    They’d stayed awake until midnight—and past. However long it took, they were there when Bert Parks announced the first runner-up, and it dawned on the other one, the girl whose name wasn’t called, that she was IT!
    There she is. They’d sung along as she paraded down the runway, each and every one of them fighting a big lump in her throat, squeezing her eyes tight trying to imagine what she must feel like. To be the fairest in the land, smack-dab in the middle of a fairy tale. An ordinary girl from an ordinary family in an ordinary town—now crowned like Cinderella. And it was permanent. You always would be Miss America. Always and forever. No matter what.
    But then Sam had grown up and gone on to Real Life, and the pageant hadn’t. The girls on TV, if she happened to flip past them on that September evening, were exactly like these