The tiara on top of Miss USA runner-up Carrie Prejean’s head is starting to feel a lot like a millstone around pageant officials’ necks.
The outspoken 21-year-old Californian raised eyebrows when she came out against same-sex marriage at the April 19 pageant. But if her crown gets taken away, it’s more likely coming from the heat she’s getting for posing nearly nude before she competed for the Miss USA crown.
TODAY chronicled Thursday the firestorm of controversy surrounding Prejean, who, pageant officials say, violated her contract not only by appearing in a televised ad for the National Organization for Marriage, but by not revealing she’d modeled in lingerie before her walk down the pageant runway.
‘Keep your clothes on’The brouhaha has led former Miss California USA director Kaylee Sanders to call for Prejean to be dethroned. “The contract is very clear,” Sanders told NBC. “The girls are fully aware of what is expected of them, what the pressures are, what their life is going to be like, so you have to keep your clothes on.”
Prejean has defended herself by saying the original photo of her in nothing more than panties was leaked as payback for her stance against gay marriage. And she sent an e-mail to Miss California USA Pageant Co-Director Keith Lewis explaining herself.
“This was when I was 17 years old,” she wrote. “I was a minor. It was when I first getting into the modeling world being naïve, and young. I shouldn’t have taken the photo of me in my underwear. There are no other photos of me. This is the only one I took.”
But was Prejean telling a little white lie? Just a day after the original racy photo leaked onto Internet site theDirty.com, yet another photo surfaced, although by all appearances it was taken at the same shoot. And the gossip Web site TMZ claims it was offered four photos of a nearly nude Prejean, although it declined to publish them because Prejean claims to have been a minor when they were taken.
But even that claim may be a stretch. The celebrity TV program “Access Hollywood” claims to have uncovered evidence Prejean was of age when the photos were taken: They say the lace underwear Prejean sports in the photo wasn’t manufactured until 2006, and Prejean turned 18 in 2005.
Miss USA’s Lewis told “Access Hollywood” he was shocked that more photos surfaced after Prejean had made her “only one” statement. “I’m absolutely stunned,” he said. “This completely changes things for us. We thought she had explained this accurately. We need to revisit this issue with her.”
Pantygate is only the latest in a long line of headlines Prejean has generated in the past two and a half weeks.
Same-sex controversy
During the question-and-answer portion of the Miss USA pageant, openly gay celebrity blogger Perez Hilton asked Prejean whether she supports legalized same-sex marriage. Prejean responded, “In my country, in my family, I think that I believe marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be.”
Hilton tore into Prejean a day later, calling her “a dumb b---,” and when the pair duked it out in interviews with Matt Lauer on TODAY, Prejean said she was being “biblically correct” and that she was “so proud of myself.”
But she ran afoul of pageant brass when she later made appearances at a San Diego church and in Washington to support an ad for the National Organization for Marriage that detailed her pageant experience. Pageant spokesman Roger Neal told The Associated Press contestant contracts prohibit them from making personal appearances or giving interviews without prior clearance.
That, coupled with her revelatory modeling shots, has Prejean in hot water. “As you can see from the contract, she violated multiple items,” Neal told the AP.
Prejean’s fate will likely be decided soon, and then the dominoes in the Miss USA pecking order could begin to topple. Second runner-up Miss Arizona, Alicia-Monique Blanco, would inherit Prejean’s title if she is ousted, and Miss California USA runner-up Tami Farrell would become the Golden State’s standard bearer.
But Farrell told NBC she isn’t savoring the prospect of a victory through Prejean’s misfortune.
“I’m not going to grab the crown off Carrie’s head,” Farrell said. “I didn’t want to be Miss California by default.”