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Airman says she is done with beauty pageants

Second Lt. Kelly George’s beauty pageant career came to a close last Friday night. This year’s Miss Arkansas USA didn’t capture the Miss USA crown, but at least “I got my two seconds” in the spotlight, she said.

George lost out in the first cut, when the field of 51 contestants shrunk to 15. Two more rounds cut the pool to five, from which Miss Tennessee USA, Rachel Smith, was chosen as this year’s winner.

The whirlwind, live TV event was “really exciting,” George said, and “definitely different from doing any other type of TV.”

“It’s always difficult when you’re up there, and you’re finding out just with everyone else who is in the top 15, who’s in the top 10,” she said. “All those girls, we might look like collected up there, but it’s definitely a little nerve wracking to be on national television and to find that out.”

And being on stage is the easy part according to George, who said the pageant’s producers made a special effort this year to show viewers the madness backstage.

“It looks glamorous when it’s on TV and we’re out competing, but really, the backstage world and the nitty-gritty of pageants is not glamorous,” George said.

When her name wasn’t called for the first cut, George said she was disappointed and also a little surprised at who had been selected. Her intrigue grew as the contestants were cut down to the final five, including one starlet (left unnamed) that startled George.

“A couple people in the top 15 really surprised me, and there was one person in the top five that I wasn’t the biggest fan of being there,” she said. “And I only say that because we have a different perspective as contestants than, you know, people watching it at home ... we almost feel like, ‘Oh, I wish they could really know what she’s like.’”

But George had nothing but praise for winner Smith. She also said she was happy to see Miss California USA, Meagan Yvonne Tandy, take 3rd runner up, as George spent three weeks of pageant preparation in a chaperoned group with Tandy.

According to George, Smith was quiet, not aggressively competitive like some other unnamed contestants.

“I’m glad she won, because she really deserved it, and on top of that she’s a nice girl,” George said.

Also, it wasn’t a total surprise.

“She’s an experienced model. It is a beauty pageant, so it’s pretty easy to just look at someone and go, ‘Wow, she’s super tall, she’s super thin, she’s gorgeous.’ You know she’s gonna do well.”

For the rest of the year, George will make appearances and perform community service as Miss Arkansas USA. After that, she is “retired from pageants officially,” she said, as Miss USA contestants are allowed into the pageant only once in a lifetime. To compete in a smaller pageant, George said, would be “anticlimactic.”

But as a public affairs officer at Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark., George’s Air Force career is just taking off. She’s scheduled for promotion to first lieutenant and head PAO at Little Rock in June. She also plans to resume her studies for a master’s in interpersonal and organizational communications, which she put on hold while training for Miss USA. And she’d like to be a pageant judge in her spare time someday.

She doesn’t have a tiara for her efforts this year, but George did take something away from the Miss USA competition.

“I think I’m going to use the experience and contacts I’ve gotten from it to enhance my career,” she said.