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Having just got off the topic of fielding a competitive team, I’m glad to say that Maine has sent a strong contestant to the Miss America pageant: Karissa Staples*.

The best thing about Staples is she has probably one of the greatest girl-next-door looks of all time.

I mean, Jesus H. Christ, she probably had to put up a deli-line number machine to field prom date offers. She’s from Biddeford, so it’s amazing no one was shot in the fight over her.

Consider Maine’s previous three Miss America contestants:

Megan Beals - Miss Maine 2005	Ami Vice - Miss Maine 2004	Elizabeth Edgecomb - Miss Maine 2003

I think Edgecomb is totally off the hook; her music is a bit outside my tastes, but she can certainly carry a tune and I’m a blathering idiot when it comes to red-haired women in general.

Her look is definitely “girl-next-door,” except for the fact she comes from Aroostook County, and all women who look like Edgecomb and come from The County leave, at least for a while — Edgecomb included.

But if I’m honest, her nose is a bit big for her face — something you can see on her MySpace profile, which in the cut-throat world of pageants, is more than enough to do you in.

Ami Vice isn’t what I would call unattractive, but I wouldn’t consider her drop-dead gorgeous by any means, either; and let’s not get into the negative connotations of having the last name “Vice” in the Miss America pageant, especially in light of the Tara Connor Miss USA scandal. (Yes, I am aware the Miss America and Miss USA pageants are unrelated, and that Vice was Miss Maine well before Connor was Miss USA. Give me some poetic license, please.)

Megan Beals falls into the same category: I’d never get a date with her, but I wouldn’t be crestfallen about it, either.

Of course, everything is perspective and scale, and matched up against Staples, all three of them are, in the crass vernacular, runts of the litter. Problem is, Staples, too, is up against the pros in the national contest, and she’s got a serious uphill struggle in front of her.

Let’s look at a few of the traditional powerhouses of the Miss America pageant and their entries for this year:

	Miss Florida: Allison Krieger This is just plain wrong. I mean, if someone handed me a human embryo in a cloning laboratory and said, “Make the ultimate beauty pageant contestant,” this is probably what I would come up with. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more classically beautiful white girl, and believe me, a significant portion of my day, every day, is devoted to looking at attractive women or their photographs. I half expect Krieger to be on the cover of Shape magazine every month.
	Miss Maryland: Brittany Lietz From the sublime to the absurd. Seriously, I suspect the hardest decision Lietz is ever going to face is which millionaire she’s going to marry. This woman’s face is pretty much the dictionary definition of “diaphanous.” I imagine Helen of Troy looked something like this.
	Miss Texas: Shilah Phillips This is simply one of the 10 most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, period. And once again, while good lights and creative use of Photoshop helps to even out some harsh lines you can see in other photos of her, she’s got that pageant look about her, which is going to be hard to defeat. Phillips has already won the first three talent contests, so Staples’ row is that much tougher to hoe.
	Miss Oklahoma: Lauren Nelson If this isn’t the prototypical beauty pageant look, I don’t know what is. And Nelson has one more bad piece of news for Staples:

Nelson won the preliminary swimsuit competition. And you can clearly see why. What the Hell is that?!

Mind you, Staples has nothing to apologize for in the swimsuit competition, either. She absolutely rocked her swimsuit. I have to admit that I prefer the meatier girls, like Nelson; yet Staples looks damn fine.

She might not have gigantic breasts or legs that look like they could snap you in half, but she’s got an amazing body.

But the swinsuit competition is where the big girls play, so to speak, and it’s definitely geared toward women who store their minute body fat in the right places [click the thumbnails for larger images]:

I’m about as pissed off by these facts as I imagine New Orleans Saints fan is about losing to the Chicago Bears last Sunday.

I mean, we’re fielding a champion here. Staples looks like she could appear in a Cover Girl commercial. She can act and sing. She looks better in a bikini than just about any other Mainer — certainly, better than anyone seen wearing something like it on Old Orchard Beach.

Staples is the most attractive of all the New England Miss America contestants, albeit that New England is not reknown for the physical appearance of its people; the same way that while the NFC might be a wasteland of football talent, the Saints are certainly loaded, especially with young talent, and worthy of any AFC team’s respect. [Again, click for larger pics]:

Staples should have more than a fighting chance to win the pageant. She’s bringing an A game. But the competition is already outpacing her, and I’m not sure it’s not entirely due to some sympathies lying in the traditional realms of pageantry — namely, that certain looks and certain states are what will do well, moreso than something new.

Well, anyway, regardless of the outcome on Monday (which you can see on CMT), Staples should know that I — and I’m sure, a lot of other Mainers — not only think she’s well worthy of taking the title, but is probably one of the strongest contestants we’ve ever fielded in the competition.

*Aside: Staples’ Web site is eight shades of awful. It has a splash page (ugh!), a meaningless / uninformative home page (eww!), uses a background image that’s too stark to read over (jeez!), awful fonts and colors, looks like it was designed by a seventh-grader, operates as though it was written in FrontPage 97, and she doesn’t even run her blogger blog in her site’s skin or on her site.

Oh, well, thankfully her talent is Broadway musicals, not Web design.