You Have No Idea: A Famous Daughter, Her No-Nonsense Mother, and How They Survived Pageants, Hollywood, Love, Loss Read Online Free PDF Page A

New York State, bordering Canada by the Thousand Islands. (That’s whereThousand Island salad dressing originated.) And that’s where I headed in July for the next leg of my beauty pageant circuit, armed with my Miss Greater Syracuse sash and my crown in its wooden box.
    And what do you know—I won that, too!
    I was happy about it. Money! A few thousand for my semester abroad! But here we go again: What’s my role? What are my duties?
    When I won Miss New York, I had no idea what that meant and what it entailed. Soon I found myself at parades in the farm belt. I’d sit in a car, waving at tractors and cows. I was thinking, Shouldn’t I be in a show right now? I always do theater in the summer. But I saw this as a temporary interruption from doing what I loved. This was just a little detour and then I’d be back on track to Broadway.
    Now don’t get me wrong—I’m no city slicker. I grew up in a small town and I loved rural living. We had family friends who owned a farm where we’d visit, drive tractors, collect eggs, the whole works. But me waving at tractors? It was an out-of-body experience. I considered it my job for the summer. The year before, I’d worked at a model registry; this year, I was waving in small-town parades.
    Besides appearing at parades, luncheons, and county fairs, I had to pick out material for the dresses I’d wear in the Miss America pageant. Vicki was still in charge and went over every aspect of the pageant circuit—the competitions, the way to walk, the way to turn at the end of the runway and look at the judges. She prepped me on questions I’d probably be asked during the interview session with the judges.
    Even though I’d won the talent portion at Miss New York with “Being Good Isn’t Good Enough,” Vicki suggested a different song—Barbra Streisand’s arrangement of “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
    “People aren’t familiar with your song, but everyone knows ‘Happy Days Are Here Again.’ It’s important to pick a song thejudges have heard before,” she explained. I listened to it and knew I could nail it.
    Vicki would conduct more mock interviews at her kitchen table. “What’s your favorite book? Movie? TV show?” She’d tape it, then hit rewind and play it back for me. I still said “um” and “you know” too much, she told me.
    She would add her two cents, guide me through what she’d do or say, but I never was given any of that processed patter that so many beauty contestants have. I did ask for her help on one question that I had no idea how to answer: “Why is it necessary to have a swimsuit competition?”
    She told me to say something like, “A fit body reflects a fit mind.”
    I loved the perks that came with winning—one of which was free clothes. You would think Miss New York would go to Madison Avenue and pick out Halston gowns (I ended up getting an original Halston gown when I met the designer at my first state dinner at the White House as Miss America). Instead I headed to Ursula of Switzerland in Schenectady, New York, where the gowns and dresses were dipped in sequins and chiffon and had puffy sleeves and asymmetrical hemlines. Not my personal style but fit for a queen.
    My mom, Vicki, and I would also shop at fabric stores in New York City’s garment district. Vicki chose the colors I should wear and told me what to avoid. “You can’t wear reds or purples—those are too ethnic,” she said.
    I did wear a red sheath gown for the parade on the Boardwalk and in the Miss America portrait. But we settled mostly on light tones: a pale lavender gown and a nude-colored sparkly gown, as well as an aqua-sequined gown—to make my eyes pop—with two enormous rosettes on the shoulders. Vicki picked everything. She’d sketch her designs on paper and then start on the original creations. Even the outfits she didn’t design, she bedazzled. We picked out myevening gown at Sibley’s, the department store from which I had purchased my bathing