We ran into our friend Jan Jacobs at the Farmington Farmers & Artisans Market this morning, and she reminded us that the Miss Michigan finals are tonight in Muskegon. Samantha Steckloff, Miss Oakland County, will be on stage at the Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts at 7 p.m., when the top 10 finalists will be announced. We wish her the best of everything; she has served her year as Miss Oakland County with passion, energy and grace.
Sam’s photo and bio are on the Miss Michigan Web site. You do have to flip through a slide show of the other contestants, but it goes quickly.
We’ll be following the action tonight by checking in with the Muskegon Chronicle at www.mlive.com
Also found an interesting blog being kept by the 2007 Miss Michigan, Gina Valo, who took over when Kirsten Haglund, a former Miss Oakland County, became Miss America. Ms. Valo’s description of Miss Michigan week sheds interesting light on the pageant process. She is an AdWords account representative for Google, and her blog is titled “Second Fiddle.” Her talent in the 2007 competition was playing “Bomshel Stomp” on the fiddle. Cute, eh?
I gained a whole new respect for the Miss America pageant system after serving as a local pageant judge a few years ago. We stereotype what we don’t understand, and I was certainly guilty of making assumptions about the “beauty queen scene.” But the national platform and scholarship money provided to the winners makes a real difference. I would imagine some contestants come into the system with the archetypal beauty queen mindset, but the young women I met were well educated and informed, committed to their causes, active volunteers in their communities and making a difference in the lives of others.
I still don’t get the swimsuit thing, but I learned a long time ago not to throw babies out with their bathwater. So to speak.
–Joni Hubred-Golden
Michigan Woman Blogger
