ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Nicole Johnson, Miss America 1999, believes in God, perseverance and Elizabeth Dole. According to the official pageant program, she is 24 years old, a Roanoke, Va., native, and hopes some day to be a "national news anchor." Her hair is brown; her "talent" is "jazz vocal." Her "best compliment" was being told that "she has a special light that shines through her smile and her eyes -- a light that shows her heart." As a diabetic, she hopes to use the "power of the crown" (one of this year's pageant slogans) to raise awareness of that disease -- making her, in the judges' estimation, the Miss who best represents this year's pageant theme of "self-expression." She is not, as former title winners repeatedly reminded last Saturday's television audience, simply a bathing beauty.

In a bid for respectability, the Miss America Organization has tried in recent years to distance itself from a flesh-peddling, flesh-pleasing past. "What's Hot" for women this year, according to the official pageant program, is "being a role model, healthy living, swimsuits with sandals, a natural look, volunteerism, brains." "What's Not!" includes "being an idol, fad diets, swimsuits with 'pumps,' lots of makeup" and "being worshipped." The "platform" issue -- Miss America's chosen social concern -- is the buzzword and focal point of the pageant, with 51 young women crusading for causes from the vague ("Promoting Character Development," "Youth Motivation") to the of-the-moment ("Freedom Through Choice: Teenage Sexual Postponement," "Privacy Rights for Public Figures") to the ultra-specific ("Literacy: St.A.R.T. -- Students and Athletes Reading Together"). The perennial swimsuit debate notwithstanding, the public makeover of Miss America from a "passive beauty queen" to a "dynamic, relevant community activist" seems to be proceeding with the utmost sincerity and determination.

Yet, somehow, Miss America is not a woman of the '90s. The very ethic of the Miss America pageant -- wholesomeness, perkiness and smiles good; ennui, sarcasm and worldliness bad -- seems to beam out over ABC from a time long past. It does not simply recall a pre-feminist era when some considered swimsuits proper attire for a scholarship interview. It also harks back to a disappearing tradition of community boosterism and shameless optimism, a tradition once perfected and exploited in the pageant's hometown of Atlantic City. Each September, that tradition briefly flares to life again, as 51 Miss America contestants descend on the city for a full two weeks of rehearsals and preliminaries capped by the effervescent telecast and a gala parade down the boardwalk.

Atlantic City's first Miss America pageant, held in 1921, was more a business proposition than a social statement. A post-Labor Day presentation of pretty girls, the city elders supposed, might extend the summer tourist season in what was then the freewheelingest resort area on the Eastern seaboard. They came up with an "inter-city" beauty contest as one segment of Fall Festival '21, which culminated with a parade down the famous boardwalk. In the 78 years since then, Atlantic City has changed far more than the pageant itself, evolving from summer hot spot to ghost town to casino capital of the Northeast. The annual tradition of the boardwalk parade, however, has survived; for a single night each year, Atlantic City's -- and Miss America's -- past is on display for all to see, to explore and, perhaps, to enjoy.

In 1921, as now, the parade was an exercise in community support, patriotism and corporate promotion, a chance to make a buck while displaying what some folks thought was best about America. And now, as then, the parade draws locals, passersby, pageant supporters and glory seekers to a full-blown bonanza of marching bands, tap-dance girls, honor guards, baton twirlers, giant floats and, most importantly, 51 (albeit increasingly clad) contestants for the title of Miss America.

Last Friday, each begowned contestant rode in her own car, each displaying, according to tradition, a pair of shoes specially chosen for their wackiness: plastic pancakes and maple syrup on heels for Vermont, Swedish troll slippers for North Dakota. While the Miss America organizers might worry about the pageant's "relevance" for American society, the roll-by persuaded at least one tiny spectator of the glamour of the crown. As each young contestant passed, a 6-year-old girl standing on a wall above the crowd, braids flailing, piped out, "I want to be like you! I want to be like you! I want to be like you!"

Aside from contestants and their miniature fans, the three-hour march down the boards drew a wide range of participants, from Vanna White, the Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders and the New Jersey Lotto ("It Pays to Dream!") to lesser-knowns such as the Original Pitman Hobo Band from Pitman, N.J., the Chattanooga/Rocket Mania All-Stars ("30 cheerleaders from Tennessee and New Jersey celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Cheerleading"), the Casino Career Institute of Atlantic Community College ("reflecting 20 years of casino gaming, 20 years of casino training") and the Utah Express Clogging Team. It also included a stunning, overwhelming stream of no fewer than 32 mostly high school marching bands, mostly grim-faced and sweating, mostly in sync. Local businesspeople turned out, too, heeding the call first trumpeted in 1921: "Join Up! Be a Wise One! Mr. Business Man, Show Your Faith in Your Home City -- Make the Pageant a Representative Civic Demonstration."

Despite lingering traditions, it would be easy to overstate the continuity between the Atlantic City of the past and that of the present. It is no longer the frenetic mix of amusements high and low that inspired Theodore Roosevelt to declare that "a man would not be a good American citizen if he did not know of Atlantic City." Today, it is a one-industry town, and that industry is gambling. The boardwalk is lined with massive casino hotels, and the patrons who once crowded the planks in expensive evening wear are more often inside, in the air-conditioning, playing the slots or perhaps grazing at the buffet. The boardwalk itself likely smells and sounds much as the boardwalk of the past, with that peculiar mix of damp wood, sea air, gull cries and human chatter. But the exuberance so evident in photos of an earlier Atlantic City is largely missing in the 88- or 99-cent tchotchke stores that fill in the space between, say, Trump Plaza and the Hard Rock Cafe.

Atlantic City is often referred to as the Las Vegas of the East, but it possesses little of the sheer chutzpah that makes Las Vegas such a marvel. Unlike booming Vegas, Atlantic City does not appear to be a wealthy town, and few of the hundreds of millions of dollars that circulate through the casinos seem to trickle down to the residents. "Cash for Gold" shops are ubiquitous just a block from the boardwalk. In part, the somewhat subdued air of Atlantic City may be due to the fact that it has a history -- that, unlike Las Vegas, it once was something other than a gambling town. Nonetheless, casinos are said to have saved Atlantic City after East Coast tourists began to take advantage of airplanes and backyard pools, electing either to stay home or go far away, beginning in the middle of the century. By the mid-'70s, according to the documentary film "Boardwalk Ballyhoo," a sign on the outskirts of the town signaled the city's perilous decline: "The last one out of Atlantic City," it requested, "please turn off the lights."

If Atlantic City can be said to have had an "innocent" era, it would have been sometime before the casinos. The city got its start as a resort town in the mid-19th century, when a doctor named Jonathan Pitney began to promote the deserted area as the perfect environment for a health cure. The town's commercial development took off later that century as hotel developers and boardwalk hucksters moved in and devised new ways to entertain the masses. By the turn of the century, Atlantic City was the summer spot to be seen and, even more importantly, to see. (It can still be seen at the small but fascinating Atlantic City History Museum, across from the Showboat casino.) The Atlantic City boardwalk, home of the country's first oceanfront amusement piers, was booming with the fantastic and the bizarre: boxing cats, diving horses, an Underwood typewriter 1,728 times its normal size -- even an incubator baby display where the public could view preemies for the bargain price of 25 cents. It became a city of unbridled corporate promotion, from the Mr. Peanut mascot who wandered the boardwalk to the Heinz 57 pier, advertising all 57 varieties of Heinz food. It became the land of Monopoly, its streets inspiring the world's bestselling board game. It became a city of showmen, with the famous Steel Pier hawking "$5 Worth of Refined Entertainment for 50 Cents," including "continuous performance, photoplays, minstrels, human cannonball, diving horses, band concerts"; performers such as Duke Ellington and Jimmy Durante made regular appearances. It became a city of firsts: the first salt-water taffy, the first souvenir postcard. And, of course, in 1921 it became home to the first Miss America pageant.

"It's part of America. I don't care what anybody says. It is. We don't have a queen. We don't have a princess. Our Miss America is that. It's legitimate, it's serious and the more I'm around, the more I've come to realize that."

Boomer Esiason is doing his job well. As part of this year's effort to modernize Miss America in image and actuality, pageant organizers have selected new hosts to replace a long line of Bert Parks successors, including Gary Collins and Regis & Kathie Lee. The new hosts, NFL quarterback turned Monday Night Football host Esiason and TV journalist Meredith Vieira, are conducting a press conference on the Friday morning before the parade, showing off their contemporary sensibility with sarcastic banter and even occasional criticisms of Miss America, especially in the swimwear department. When asked about the meaning of Miss America, though, the broad-necked Esiason grows serious and pulls through handily, much to his own evident pleasure and surprise.

The big news at the press conference, though, is that one of the contestants may have lied about her academic record and now, just 30-some hours before the live television broadcast is scheduled to begin, she may be thrown out of the pageant. (As it turns out, she remains in, though she doesn't make the top 10.) Reporters from local and national papers gossip among themselves, denouncing their editors for suggesting the controversy unworthy of publication, betting on this year's winners. As the conference winds up, with a worried-looking Miss America Organization CEO and President Leonard Horn refusing to offer details about the urgent fraud investigation under way, reporters begin to file out of the room and prepare for several hours of downtime until the evening's parade.

Outside the room, two young women are waiting for the press. They are not contestants but "representatives of the aerosol industry," here to set the record straight concerning Miss America and her various necessary and enviro-safe cosmetic sprays. One flack explains that the Miss America pageant is particularly perilous ground for her industry, seeing as how it tends to spark untoward jokes about hair spray and the world's dwindling supply of ozone. She cites Jay Leno, who, evidently, has been known to joke that pageant contestants should be asked how much of the ozone layer they have personally destroyed. "It's funny," she says, scrunching up her nose to show that she doesn't really believe that, "but it's not accurate." According to the press releases rolled inside promotional aerosol cans, the industry got rid of ozone-depleting CFCs in 1978. Meanwhile, the contestants themselves -- each of whom will have contact with an estimated four sprays, including "firm grip" to ensure that swimsuit remains on butt -- are taking a break from rehearsal. Their afternoons will be filled with camera blocking for tomorrow night's telecast, closed to press and public.

Outside on the boardwalk, excitement and preparations for the evening's parade are under way. Various gradations of chairs, from brown plastic to cushioned red vinyl, rest empty along the boardwalk planks. Supporters from across the country -- with emphasis on the southern half -- are milling around in custom-designed T-shirts sporting the name, state and, often, giant silk-screened face of chosen contestants. The truly enthused also don oversized buttons of one or another smiling, mascaraed hopeful. Sometimes they burst out into spontaneous cheers: "Go Miss Illinois Mandy Meadows!"

By 6 o'clock, the Miss America pilgrims have staked out reserved seats near Convention Hall, preparing themselves for perhaps the most raucous and certainly the most community-oriented aspect of the two-week-long pageant. As the Atlantic City Police Department motorcycle escort crawls forward with sirens blaring, a loud long roar erupts and the parade begins its inexorable annual procession down the boards. The first contestants, appearing in reverse alphabetical order, ride by perched atop the back seats of shiny convertibles. In keeping with this year's "self-expression" theme, they are wearing outfits of their own choosing. Miss Wyoming has donned an Old West good-time girl ensemble, complete with black fishnets and black heels ornamented with hot pink feathers. Behind her, Miss Wisconsin has chosen to go playful in a dainty white wedding-type dress accompanied by a worn-out pair of cow slippers. Miss West Virginia goes for the sporty look, showing off sneakers adorned with a flowering of small baseballs, tennis balls and sundry other athletic items.

The contestants appear two or three at a time, interspersed between more than 80 bands, dance troupes and floats. While the contestants present one view of American femininity -- good-natured, mildly creative, attractive if a little stiff -- the young girls who make up the bulk of parade participants add depth to that somewhat two-dimensional picture. They are trombone players and flag girls, cloggers and cheerleaders. They are too fat or too thin, too tall or too short -- flush-faced, self-serious and usually a little bit awkward. They twirl and hoot in uniforms ranging from heavy maroon polyester capes and pants to the barest of little black body suits. They play "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and shimmy to Top 40 hits.

And, to at least one member of the audience, they are glorious. "You're beautiful, girls," screams a local woman standing by the sidelines; she hollers similar sentiments at each of the 80-plus groups on display. And if nobody else is quite so verbally enthused, the clatter of applause that bursts forth with each new appearance testifies that these girls, too -- the girls of South Jersey and Pennsylvania, Tennessee and New York -- deserve recognition. These are our girls, the applause seems to confirm, worthy of support. And worthy of the school fund-raising efforts that brought them to Atlantic City and the Miss America pageant, where the past continues to collide with the present.