ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — One wants to be the first female governor of North Dakota. One is a half-blind baton twirler who performed at a Super Bowl. Another wants to chase tornadoes.
One wants to run an alpaca farm, another is a former NFL cheerleader, yet another wants to sing the National Anthem at a Boston Red Sox game, and there is another who wants to be a criminal profiler for the FBI.
The 51 women vying to become the next Miss America have a wide range of interests, dreams and backgrounds, which they’ll be sharing with the nation this week in the run-up to Sunday’s nationally televised finale of the scholarship pageant.
“I really want to be a real-life Miss Congeniality,” says Miss Nevada, Andrea Martinez. Unlike the movie in which FBI agent Sandra Bullock enters a national pageant to prevent a crime, Martinez is trying it in reverse order: Become Miss America, THEN become an FBI agent.