Miss America's stealth virginity campaign

With the coveted tiara firmly in her grasp, beauty queen Erika Harold quickly unveiled plans to promote her pet cause: Abstinence-only sex education.

By Lara Riscol

Oct 28, 2002 | When Erika Harold, an articulate, multiracial Harvard Law student, aced her Miss America interview to take the throne, organizers of the pageant claimed an important victory of their own. Quoted in a Salon story headlined "Brains 1, Barbie 0," they crowed with satisfaction, believing that by rejiggering the scoring to emphasize intelligence, and directing judges to reward academic chops over bathing beauty, they had brought new respect to a politically incorrect ritual.

In a letter to the editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, five of the pageant judges wrote, "She [Harold] will spend the next 365 days trying to eradicate harassment and violence from schools. Is Miss America relevant? You bet."

And best of all, the Miss America organization had dodged the bullet of sex scandal, driving from serious consideration a Miss North Carolina whose spurned fiancé had threatened to expose topless snapshots of her, taken, allegedly, without her permission.

Alas, less than a month after the festivities, sex looms once again as a spoiler -- after the fact -- of the Miss America proceedings; but this time it is not the revelation of wanton ways that has created headaches for contest officials, it is the queen's abrupt shift from a platform against youth violence to a campaign for sexual abstinence that threatens to disrupt the event's smooth transition from tawdry bikini fest to a bare-midriff college bowl.

It all began when Harold, shortly after receiving her tiara, announced at a press conference her intention to publicly advocate chastity before marriage. This was a pet topic, Harold told reporters, and she had every hope of speaking of it often and officially, despite perceived resistance from Miss America organizers. The implication that Harold had somehow been warned away from sex talk, albeit anti-sex talk, fired up the Washington Times, which immediately ran an article titled "Miss America told to zip it on chastity talk." Harold's ardent supporters in the abstinence movement went to other media brimming with indignation.

"In an age where beauty queens are regularly disqualified for inappropriate behavior, who would have thought a virtuous one would be silenced for her virtue?" said Concerned Women for America President Sandy Rios in a press release. "This is blatant censorship that betrays a hidden agenda of political correctness and religious bigotry among pageant officials."

The Times and press releases from family values groups further suggested that pageant officials demonstrated a clear liberal bias when they allowed Miss America 1998 Kate Shindle, whose platform was HIV prevention, to advocate condom distribution and needle exchange during her reign.

Media outlets from the Austin American Statesman to People magazine ran with the story, saying pageant officials tried to silence Harold's pro-chastity opinions, and that the brainy beauty queen refused to be "bullied." Already elevated to heroine status in abstinence-only circles, Miss America was quickly embraced by the Bush administration's conservative ranks, many of whom met with her in Washington to discuss her platform. And 38 members of Congress immediately sent Harold a letter encouraging her to "stand up for your beliefs and promote the healthy message of abstinence until marriage."

Finally, as controversy threatened to overtake all positive spin, Miss America officials warmed to Harold's abstinence stance, a change of heart, according to Focus on the Family and Family Research Council, inspired by the demand of angry conservatives to loosen the new queen's "muzzle."

Miss America's interim CEO George Bauer has been unavailable for comment, as has Erika Harold. But in an Oct. 9 press release, the new Miss America said that she had thought she wouldn't be able to talk about abstinence in an official capacity, but after her press conference, she met with contest officials and "clarified the role abstinence will play in the advocacy of my platform." Youth violence prevention would still be part of her platform, said Harold, but, she added, "I will be speaking this year about abstinence in all forms -- including abstaining from drugs, alcohol and sex ..."

In an interview with her hometown paper, the News-Gazette, the Urbana native went a bit further, saying, "It was always my intention to incorporate some form of abstinence education into my youth-violence platform. I never desired to be subversive or to have a double platform. It baffled me that there was a controversy about it."

Perhaps doubly baffled are those who see the platform switch as controversial, if not downright sneaky. "When I went to bed, it was youth violence and I breathed a huge sigh of relief," said Susan Wilson, executive coordinator for Rutgers University Network for Family Life Education, advocates of comprehensive sexuality education. "I think the judges should take her crown away for lying. What a role model."

Next Page: Incredibly, Harold had never publicly spoken of this torment before taking on the youth violence platform

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