Shindle: I thought that the specific changes they chose to make were pretty arbitrary. I mean, under the proposed new rules, you could have a divorced woman or someone who had an abortion competing, but a woman who was sexually assaulted and put the baby up for adoption couldn't compete because the baby was still living.

That's senseless! I will say that I always wondered when the Miss America Organization was going to hit a brick wall because someone who had been sexually victimized and gotten pregnant was ruled ineligible.

Anyway, as for the future, I think they either need to leave things alone or do away with the morals clause completely and let the judges decide which contestants have integrity. It's pretty apparent from the way a young woman carries herself, I think.

My AIDS work has taught me the value of life, and I am quite opposed to abortion. I have been very cautious, though, as a former Miss America, to try to avoid the self-professed moral superiority that seemed to be a temptation to some within our system at the time the rule changes were proposed. I would never want anyone to misinterpret my attitude as something to the effect of, "Well, I was good enough to be Miss America, but those people certainly aren't." That's not what Miss America is about, in my opinion.

Finally, I will say that I feel a great deal of anxiety for any Miss America or any contestant who revealed that she had had an abortion or had been involved in some morally questionable behavior, because the press would eat her alive, and it would be very difficult for her to focus on her platform issue. She would be asked questions about it every day in every interview for an entire year. There would certainly still be a cost even if eligibility wasn't it.

PNB: The most famous scandal in Miss America history was the dethroning of Vanessa Williams in 1984 because she had posed for adult-oriented photos. Was that the right decision then? Do you think it would be the right decision now? What could a Miss America do or say that would make her unfit for the title?

Shindle: I think the Vanessa Williams decision was the only one that the organization could have made at the time, and that the conflict of interest seemed, in retrospect, largely circumstantial. From what I've heard, Vanessa didn't intend to get involved in pageants at the time she posed and was misinformed about the nature of the photos, thinking they would be silhouettes. The Miss America Organization couldn't really have "our ideal," whatever that means, plastered on the pages of Penthouse.

If anything, it's a serious caveat to anyone aspiring to compete in pageants. I remember one of the Miss America Organization officials telling us at Disney World that whoever won the title would have people digging through their trash and bribing friends for photos. "Inside Edition" shattered my family's doorbell, and the press camped out in our front yard for days. My friends were offered plenty of money to bring out the skeletons in my closet. Luckily, I don't really have any. The Miss America Organization circumvented a repeat of the 1984 scandal by putting a clause in the contract about having never posed in the nude. There's not really much of a gray area. You've either done it or you haven't. If you've done it, you can't sign the contract. You can't compete, end of story.

I think if a story like that broke in the future, they'd handle it the same way. It's not like Vanessa hasn't gotten on with her life and been hugely successful. Circumstances just dictated that Miss America wasn't the right place for her that year.

I had to work hard to get into shape for swimsuit. I'm proud of the shape I was in. I never felt exploited.