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Miss America is scrapping its swimsuit competition and will no longer judge contestants based on physical appearance, the organization announced Tuesday. "We are no longer a pageant," Gretchen Carlson, the first former Miss America to be named chair of the Board of Trustees of the Miss America Organization, said on "GMA." "We are a competition." In place of the swimsuit portion of the competition, Miss America contestants will now take part in a live interactive session with the judges, according to the organization. The contestants from all 50 states and the District of Columbia will be asked to demonstrate their...

The Miss America Organization board of directors has voted to suspend CEO Sam Haskell one day after HuffPost published internal emails showing Haskell disparaging and commenting crudely on the appearances of women who had competed in the pageant to other members of the organization. "The Miss America Organization Board of Directors today voted to suspend Executive Chairman and CEO Sam Haskell. Mr. Haskell, in support of the organization, has agreed to abide by the Board's decision," a spokesperson for the organization said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter on Friday. "The Board will be conducting an in-depth investigation into...

The top leaders of the Miss America Organization resigned Saturday after the revelation of emails in which previous pageant winners were disparaged and called crude names. Sam Haskell stepped down as chief executive, and board chairman Lynn Weidner submitted her resignation, according to the organization, which puts on the annual pageant. Update from the Board of Directors… pic.twitter.com/W8am9ii2fM— Miss America Org (@MissAmericaOrg) December 23, 2017 Pageant President Josh Randle and Washington media maven Tammy Haddad, a board member, also resigned.The resignations came after 49 former Miss America winners signed a petition asking for Haskell to step down after the publication...

Nothing is safe from someone injecting their politics into it, not even beauty pageants. In the case of this year’s Miss America contest, contestants were asked to put Trump on the chopping block on subjects like Russian collusion to climate change. According to the Media Research Center, the Republican bashing began when judge Jordin Sparks hit Miss Missouri, Jennifer Davis, with a question about whether or not Trump was guilty of colluding with Russia. Davis answered the president was “innocent,” prompting cheers from the crowd. From the MRC: Sparks: There are multiple investigations into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia...

North Dakota's Cara Mund claimed the crown as Miss America 2018 during Sunday night's competition at Atlantic City's Boardwalk Hall. Miss America 2017, Savvy Shields, former Miss Arkansas, placed the crown on the 23-year-old teary-eyed successor's head as the new Miss America accepted applause and cheers from the audience and judges. Miss North Dakota emerged victorious through a series of swimsuit and talent contests, onstage speeches and two rounds of interviews by judges. In one of her onstage interviews, Mund said President Trump, a Republican, was wrong to withdraw the U.S. from the climate accord aimed at reducing greenhouse gas...

It may be a fool's errand to try to predict who will win the 2018 Miss America pageant, even if you do care about the Atlantic City show, which airs 9 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 10 on ABC. (Given the musical selections of the event over the past few years, "A Calvin Harris/Coldplay song" would be the most accurate guess.) But here are some top picks anyway, given our coverage of pageant happenings this week at Boardwalk Hall. These contestants may not triumph over the rest of the 51

An iconic photograph of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton using her BlackBerry while wearing sunglasses on a military plane in 2011 prompted a recordkeeping official in her office to inquire about whether Clinton had been assigned a State.gov email address, the State Department disclosed this week.Clarence Finney, who oversaw an office responsible for Freedom of Information Act searches, raised the question about an official account after seeing the photo in the media, according to testimony at a deposition held Wednesday and released Thursday. The image went viral on social media in 2012, prompting a "Texts from Hillary" meme."When Mrs. Clinton's...

Does integrity count anymore? It is a question worth asking. More importantly, it is a question worth answering. On Wednesday, retired General and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton made an astounding public remark. After having completed a spell-binding speech at Foothill College in Los Altos, Calif., as to the events of 9-11 and his 38 years serving in the United States military, Shelton was asked a question that brought a disquieting hush across the crowd. The Los Altos Town Crier newspaper put the events this way: "What do you think of Gen. Wesley Clark, and...

Miss Arkansas Savvy Shields won the Miss America pageant Sunday night in Atlantic City. She topped a field of 52 contestants to win the crown and the title of Miss America 2017, succeeding the outgoing Miss America Betty Cantrell. Shields performed a jazz dance to a song from the TV show "Smash," for which she won a preliminary competition earlier in the week. During the onstage interview portion of the competition, she was asked what she thought of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, one of several political questions asked of the contestants. "Both of the contestants have done a good...

The first ever openly lesbian Miss America contestant took the stage for the first time during the second night of the preliminary competition on Wednesday. Miss Missouri Erin O'Flaherty, 23, strutted her stuff during the swimsuit competition and spoke about National Suicide Prevention Week during her on stage question. Miss Maryland Hannah Brewer and Miss Arkansas Savvy Shields won the night's preliminary contests in the swimsuit and talent portion. Brewer won the swimsuit competition, while Shields nabbed the talent portion after jazz dancing to They Just Keep Moving The Line, a song from former NBC show Smash. 'We were just...

Miss Missouri, Erin O’ Flaherty, will compete for the Miss America crown this weekend as the first openly lesbian contestant.

Missouri has its first openly gay Miss Missouri, and she will represent the state at the Miss America pageant later this year. Erin O’Flaherty, 23, was crowned Miss Missouri on Saturday in Mexico, Missouri, and is the first openly gay woman to be named Miss Missouri, said Ann Jolly, chairman of the board of the Miss Missouri Scholarship Organization. O’Flaherty said Wednesday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that she came out as gay when she was 18, competed openly and knew going into the Miss Missouri pageant that she’d be making history if she won. …

Miss Puerto Rico Destiny Velez has been indefinitely suspended by the official Miss America Organization after sending a series of offensive anti-Muslim messages on Twitter. Velez, 20, launched an anti-Muslim tirade at filmmaker Michael Moore on Thursday after he shared a photo of himself outside of Trump Tower in New York City with a sign reading: 'We are all Muslim.' Moore's photo was in response to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US, which inspired the hashtag #WeAreAllMuslim on social media. The former beauty queen sent a number of tweets directed to Moore including...

It’s time to make Miss America Great Again!Last night was the 2016 Miss America contest (the only beauty pageant NOT owned by Donald Trump). It was filled with the usual displays of talent, runway strutting and stupid questions to which there can only be stupid answers. And this year’s contestants did not disappoint. Just like “sort of Marge” in the Essurance commercial, each Miss America wannabe maneuvered the loaded questions with confidence, smiley faces, mixed metaphors, dangling participles and non sequiturs.Beauty queen shares her opinion on healthcare in the America of the U.S.Topics covered every conceivable issue crucial to the...

For the first time since she was crowned Miss America in 1984, Tony-nominated actress Vanessa Williams returns to the Miss America stage, Sept 13. Williams is serving as Head Judge for the "2016 Miss America Competition." She joins host Chris Harrison, co-host Brooke Burke-Charvet, music curator Nick Jonas and celebrity judges Brett Eldredge, Taya Kyle, Danica McKellar, Kevin O'Leary, Amy Purdy and Zendaya. The "Miss America Competition" airs live from Atlantic City's Boardwalk Hall Sept. 13 beginning at 9 PM ET on ABC-TV. Fifty-two women compete for the coveted crown and scholarship. -

I am just saying. REELZ is promoting the Miss America pagent, bigtime. Your loss, NBC

Bess Myerson, whose death at age 90 was revealed this week, was a Miss America who lived through nearly a century of change in the perception of "the ideal American woman." She paid for being a celebrity in the way many celebrities before and after her paid with fame and (mis)fortune. She was crowned in 1945, when the Miss America Pageant was taken more seriously than it is today, and she was anything but the typical "queen of femininity." But she was something special in certain ethnic neighborhoods, crowned just days after the bomb wrote finis to World War II...

Actress, philanthropist and former Miss America Mary Ann Mobley died Tuesday morning in Beverly Hills, Calif., after a second battle with breast cancer, one of her daughters has announced in a statement to NBC News. She was 75. Born in Biloxi, Mississippi, Mobley, was crowned Miss America in 1959 and became one of the few Miss Americas to launch a successful TV and movie career. She graduated from "Ole Miss" in 1958 and was the university's first Carrier Scholar and the first woman voted into the Alumni Hall of Fame. In 1962, Mobley made her successful Broadway debut in the...

Just a week into her reign as Miss America 2015, Kira Kazantsev has had to answer questions about a three month internship at Planned Parenthood and getting kicked out of her Hofstra University sorority for abusive hazing. “Under the broad definition of hazing, yes, I was involved,” Kazantsev told "Good Morning America" on Tuesday. “At the time, unfortunately, that was just the culture of the university, and I was hazed, and I was kind of brought up through the organization thinking that is appropriate behavior.” While the story made headlines and forced Kazantsev to explain her actions on national television,...

But Kazantsev was no Miss Congeniality at Hofstra University, where she was expelled from her sorority last year for hazing new recruits. On her resume, Kazantsev lists that she was new member educator and recruitment committee president for the university's chapter of Alpha Phi, a position she reportedly shared with her best friend in the spring term of 2013. A source told Jezebel that Kazantsev and her friend made the pledges' lives 'a living hell' by calling them names, and berating them over physical flaws. The terrifying duo reportedly made the new members perform certain physical tasks to the point...