Still Standing: The Untold Story of My Fight Against Gossip, Hate, and Political Attacks

by Carrie Prejean

  Because I had been sent to the wrong address, I had the priceless opportunity to spend two hours visiting the beautiful children of the cancer ward. Some of the little girls were bald. All of them were cute. And they oohed and aahed as if a real Disney princess had showed up in their room when they saw me wearing my crown and sash. The teenage boys lit up when I walked into the ward, grinning at their good luck. They couldn’t wait to click a picture with me on their cell phones to send to all their friends. I visited some of the more severe cases—children who had suffered relapses or were facing their last chance to beat the disease. Their lives were on the line. But I was touched, moved, overjoyed to have been there for them that night. For me the contrast between Planet Hollywood and the cancer ward of the children’s hospital could not have been starker. I knew where I was needed and where I wasn’t.

  There was no doubting that I was straddling two worlds. Here I was in a short cocktail dress (I threw a jacket over my shoulders to cover up a bit), in high heels, and made up like a Barbie doll. I would rather have gone as Miss California the helper, in a business suit (crown, sash, and all), rather than as Miss California the hot new thing.

  To my mind the real worth of a pageant is not about celebrity, because celebrity is an illusion created by the media puffing up people who are no more special than you or I. But celebrity can be used in ways that help people. There was no mistaking that the crown on my head acted like magic, bringing a glow of happiness to a ward full of sick kids who might not have had very much to be happy about. I firmly believe that God had a plan for me that night, and I had plenty of time to reflect on it after I left the hospital, while the children were saying sweet good nights to their parents. I thanked the hospital staff who had done so much to make this visit such a wonderful one, and then sometime after midnight checked myself into a hotel. There I came to some grim conclusions.

  Keith was supposed to be a professional; he was supposed to know something about pageants. He was in charge of running the Miss California organization, and yet he seemed to take no interest in events where I could use my title to do some good; his office came across as disorganized and dysfunctional, existing only so he could exploit girls like me for whatever celebrity he gained from it. That might have represented his interests, but I didn’t think it served my best interests or the interests of the pageant. It certainly didn’t r epresent the ideal of service that I thought being Miss California was all about. The one good thing his office had done for me that night was a mistake—a mistake that had embarrassingly sent me to the wrong event, but that had, ironically, opened a path far better than anything I could have imagined.

  Keith might have valued my going to Imperial Planet, but that was not my scene, and what possible use was it for me to go there? When I visited the kids, I felt that was where I should be. I felt like the Lord was saying, “This is what you’re supposed to be doing.” It’s about serving, not glamour. Certainly not Imperial Planet. Later, in the spring, I had become so bothered by the lack of planning or structure in my schedule that I sent a memo to Keith’s office:Just a thought. I was wondering if the . . . website could have a “book Miss California USA for an appearance” section. I think that would be great for organizations to go on the website and know the information on how to request me for an event . . . . Just a thing to think about, don’t know if you were already thinking about doing something like this. It was just fresh in my mind, and I thought I’d ask.

  To make it crystal clear, I even posted an example from the website of the Miss America Organization. I got no response.

  While I was preparing to compete for Miss USA, Shanna invited me to spend the night at her house (Travis Barker’s house) in a celebrity neighborhood, where, she told me, Britney Spears lived right down the hill from her—very exciting—not. I’m not saying I can’t be as star-struck as the next girl, but the whole Hollywood-celebrity-tabloid culture was pretty far removed from me. If Shanna was US Weekly, I was Sports Illustrated; we lived in different worlds.

  I spent the whole day with Shanna. We went to dinner, and I really got to know her. She was much friendlier in this setting than she had been before, but she used such coarse language, and she was so full of gossip about Hollywood, that I felt a bit alienated from her, too. I was twenty-one; she was in her mid-thirties. I was supposed to look to her for leadership, but I found that a hard proposition to swallow.

  While I was getting ready for bed, Shanna, who is a night owl and likes to sit up late blogging, asked if I wanted to watch a movie in her enormous movie theater room. I said sure. But she had another thing she wanted to talk about—my answer at the Miss California Pageant where I had spoken about leadership in the context of mentoring girls at my college. She said I answered these questions well, but there was a little too much about God.

  She turned blunt: “Don’t talk about God anymore. It just makes people feel really uncomfortable.”

  Then she got blunter: “Really, I don’t want you talking about God, because not everybody believes in God, so don’t talk about him anymore.”

  I didn’t want to get into a big discussion about this with her. I told her I was a Christian, God is a big part of my life, and that when it came to answering the question about leadership, I had replied as honestly as I could.

  But as far as providing a witness, I have to confess I was pretty muted. When she asked if I would stop talking about God, I didn’t reply. I just changed the subject.

  My response (or non-response) bothered me then, and it bothered me for a long time afterward. I felt as if I had failed myself, as if I had been given a chance to stick up for my faith and completely blown it. The first Christians sacrificed their lives rather than burn incense on the altar of Caesar. And here I was saying basically, “Okay, sure.”

  The “God question” had arisen just a few weeks after my surgery, when I was filling out my Miss USA application. It included questions like: “Where do you go to school?” and “What do you like to do?”

  One question stood above all others: “If you could have lunch with any person, dead or alive, who would it be?”

  I answered God.

  Now I know some people might find this a bit silly. After all, where would you go to eat with God? Taco Bell?

  But there was a deeper meaning for me. Who do I admire most? Who can tell me what I need most to know about my life and what to do?

  So I gave an explanation of how I would like to thank God face to face for all that he has done for me. I wrote about how amazing it would be just to be with him.

  I explained all this to Keith’s assistant in an email: “If I got to see God face to face, I would thank Him personally for His sacrifice, grace, and love for me. Just being in His presence alone, I might be speechless.”

  No sooner had I sent in my application for Keith’s approval than I got a call. Why? “Because,” Keith said, “God is not really a person.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’ll put Jesus. Will that make it less confusing?”

  Keith answered, “A lot of people don’t believe in Jesus.”

  “I’m a Christian,” I told him, “I believe in Jesus.”

  “I’m not comfortable with you putting Jesus,” he said. “Why don’t you pick an answer that’s appealing to most people? Why don’t you pick George Bush?”

  George Bush! From commander of the universe to commander in chief was a long step down. No offense to the president. After all, when Bush was asked his favorite philosopher, he replied, “Christ, because he changed my heart.” He didn’t say Richard Nixon.

  “Okay,” Keith said, trying another tact, “change it to ‘God, whichever god you wish it to be.’”

  Once again, I went along. I took God out of my application entirely—better that than making it “whichever god you wish it to be”—and instead wrote that I would like to have lunch with California’s first lady, Maria Shriver.

  Changing my answer added to my disappointment in myself. I talked to a good frien
d about it and said I felt like God had brought me up to this point, but when it came to the test, I dropped Him, because Keith Lewis told me to. A good friend, Juliana, told me, “Carrie, don’t beat yourself up over it. As a Christian girl, you will have an opportunity to make up for it.” I hoped so. I resolved that I wouldn’t compromise my beliefs again.

  One way I could keep my reslove was through the events I set up for myself. One was a visit to a retirement home for former pro-football players and their spouses. My paternal grandparents Anita and Billy came with me. I talked about them, about how much I had learned from them, how they had instilled in me the need to stay true to who I am and to my faith, how they had taught me how to enjoy life, and how they had helped me appreciate the meaning of family. They have been married for fifty-seven years, and have twenty-one grandchildren and twenty-one great-grandchildren.

  Sure it was personal, and I was glad to be able to honor my grandparents in that way, but it was also a message appreciated by the audience. Retirement homes weren’t on Keith’s Hollywood List, but I definitely had the impression that Miss California was more appreciated there, or at hospitals, than she might be at Imperial Planet. I told Keith’s office assistant about the event. She replied in an email, “Awww how nice. I’ll def include in the newsletter.”

  But if that event was down-home, I was soon to be thrust onto a national stage: the Miss USA Pageant in Las Vegas. This was the climax of it all—and it would result in my making headlines that shocked me as much as they shocked anyone else.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Not Exactly “World Peace”

  The two-and-a-half weeks in Las Vegas for the Miss USA Pageant were a crazy blur of appearances, press conferences, and charity events. At each event, I sized up the competition, fifty other beautiful women (all fifty states are represented, plus the District of Columbia). Only one of us would leave as the winner. I was determined to stay focused and not let any drama with the other girls get me off my game.

  As unreal as everything was—Las Vegas with its fake Eiffel Tower and replica New York skyline—living for a long time in the spaceship environment of the Planet Hollywood Hotel only made it weirder. I suddenly found myself in the middle of a mob scene, paparazzi, and an assortment of followers everywhere we went. For once, I had a chaperone, as well as security. I also had a roommate, Aureana, who was Miss Hawaii.

  We all soon fell into a routine together. The Miss USA Organization was already using us as beauty queens, sending us to wholesome events. Between the appearances and outings to see Cirque du Soleil and other shows, I was working my butt off. We couldn’t go down to the gym or the pool, but we could exercise in our rooms and in the hallways. We were up at 6:00 a.m., to breakfast by 7:00 a.m., then five hours of rehearsing every aspect of the pageant. Lights out at midnight. It was tough and weird, like enlisting in the Navy SEALs, only with paparazzi and neon lights.

  The pressure began to wear on some of the girls. Some of them were actually starving themselves. Some had brittle, fake smiles and looked as if they were on the verge of having a breakdown. The whole time I kept telling myself that I was tough enough to make it through: “I’m an athletic girl; I’m not a pageant girl. I can take this.”

  The fake environment was amplified by the fake beauty—fake hair, fake eyelashes, fake tans—everything about the pageant and our host city of Las Vegas was artificial and fake. But I couldn’t be too judgmental, because I was one of them, with my new boobs and my platinum-blonde hair. I thought if my new little friends would help me win, then so be it. I’ll put on my best smile and be fake, too. But as determined as I was to win, and even as I had gone along with the hair and with the surgery, I was equally determined that I wouldn’t let the pageant change who I really was. When this was over, I’d still be Carrie Prejean of Vista, California—maybe Carrie Prejean, Miss USA, representing my country to the world, but Carrie Prejean the real person all the same.

  Cliques began to form. I had mine. I hung out with the West Coast girls—they had a more laid-back attitude, and they were fun. The East Coast girls formed their own little group as well. In the most casual way, everyone was always looking to check out what the other girls were wearing—and then one-up them.

  The one thing everyone asks me is whether the atmosphere is every bit as catty as you might imagine from movies like Miss Congeniality. Is the insincerity as thick as the hair spray? I would see girls try to undermine each other by getting inside their victim’s head. Here’s how it goes: Get to know a girl who you fear might beat you. Be nice to her. Encourage her to cling. Then say something undermining like, “Tracy, you look so beautiful, do you really want to do that to your hair?” This was a game I didn’t play myself. But my years of experience with basketball helped me to instantly recognize these tactics when I saw them.

  If the cattiness and artificiality were the downside, there were upsides too. We were sent to do a “buddy walk” with developmentally disabled youth. The itinerary instructed us to dress comfortably. I had done many similar events with Special Olympics, so I showed up in what I thought was appropriate: my Adidas sweats—the ones I used to wear for warm-ups before basketball games—a hat, and my red Converse sneakers. But even here some of the girls tried to outdo each other. Some of then showed up in six-inch heels with their hair all done up. I remembered how I had felt out of place when I’d worn the cocktail dress to the children’s hospital—apparently these girls felt differently. Still, as far as I was concerned, they could have showed up in their swimsuits. I focused on enjoying the event—my favorite event of the entire three weeks I was in Las Vegas—and getting to know my buddy, a wonderful girl named Amanda, who reminded me, as if I needed reminding, of just how terrific it is to be able to work with disabled children. In a society like ours that puts such value on looks and intelligence and how much money you can make, it’s good to be reminded that our humanity doesn’t depend on our physical abilities, or whether we’re the smartest, or how productive we are. Humanity goes a lot deeper than that. Every single child, from the most gifted and talented to the most severely disabled, is a unique and valuable human soul—and we should cherish every one.

  While I loved this event and was thrilled that the Miss USA organizers had put it together, I nevertheless was having second thoughts. I had no intention of pulling out of the competition, but I knew why I had not wanted to compete again in the first place. I felt myself getting irritated with the whole pageant atmosphere, the insincerity of it all; and though I thrive on competition, this sort of competition had begun to lose its charm for me. Again, it was a matter of contrasts—fake hair, fake tans, and fake smiles were nothing to the sincere, beaming smiles of a disabled kid. I knew which was more rewarding for me.

  Easter came, and for the first time in my life, I wasn’t able to be in church on the most important day in the Christian calendar. I had asked my house mom if I could leave the hotel to go church, but she kindly said no. Later, I heard that some of the girls were getting together for Bible study. I hoped to join them, but the meeting fell through. So I read my Bible in my room, alone.

  When word got around that I had been reading the Bible in my room, a number of the girls came up to me to talk about their faith. To be frank, I was surprised that no one made fun of me—maybe I had been too influenced by what Shanna had said about keeping quiet about God because the subject made people uncomfortable. Instead, I was awed by the strong, deep faith some of these girls expressed. I learned an important lesson in not to leaping to judgment. Far from being walking Barbie dolls, some of these girls showed maturity and depth, growing in their faith, wanting to help others, and hoping the pageant would help them do that work. To my mind, they had the right idea.

  What you might not realize about the Miss USA Pageant is that there is a whole preliminary competition that goes on before the televised event. During this phase, I faced a panel of six preliminary judges for the swimsuit, gown, and interview events. These judges were regular people w
ho wanted to get to know me. They asked me about my life, my school, and my hobbies. I tried to be natural, but of course I was standing tall above them on a stage. The judges looked at my contestant information sheet and saw that I volunteered at the Special Olympics. They asked me what I thought about Barack Obama’s recent comments on the Special Olympics. President Obama had been on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and made a comment about how his bowling skills were like something out of the Special Olympics. It was widely regarded as a bad joke. I said I had been disappointed by his remarks, because they could be seen as mocking the Special Olympics (or the Special Olympians themselves), but the president had apologized, and all of us make mistakes; and I reaffirmed my own passionate commitment to the good work done by the Special Olympics. As I watched the judges, it seemed to me they already had their favorites, their short list of candidates they thought would make it to the final cuts. I came out hoping I might be one of them.

  One day after rehearsals, we finally got to meet Donald Trump, who, along with NBC, owns the Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants. We were told to put on our opening number outfits—they were nearly as revealing as our swimsuits—and line up for him on stage. Donald Trump walked out with his entourage and inspected us closer than any general ever inspected a platoon. He would stop in front of a girl, look her up and down, and say, “Hmmm.” Then he would go on and do the same thing to the next girl. He took notes in a little pad as he went along.

  After he did this, Trump said, “Okay. I want all the girls to come forward.” We stepped forward in unison, like soldiers asked to volunteer for a dangerous mission.

  Donald Trump looked at Miss Alabama.

  “Come here,” he said.

  She took one more step forward.

  “Tell me, who’s the most beautiful woman here?”