I can’t remember when I lost interest in Miss America.

As a kid, I really liked hunkering down on pageant night to watch the glamorous girls in pretty dresses.  I liked the glitter, the crowns, the whole bit.  I always scanned the sashes for Miss New Hampshire and rooted heartily for our rep.  (I didn’t know then that a Granite Stater has never won the competition.  California, Ohio and Pennsylvania gals have hauled in six titles each for their states.) 

Some time back, I guess, I realized that I was bored.  Miss America contestants all looked the same: foofy hair, gaudy dresses, plastic smiles.  And the competitions never changed: silly musical numbers, corny hosts, blah blah blah…

Though — I couldn’t possibly write about pageants without mentioning this — let’s face it: these beauty contests (ahem! scholarship programs) have been pretty entertaining lately, if in a highly unfortunate way.

Poor Lauren Caitlin Upton, Miss South Carolina Teen USA, absolutely annihilated her chances of winning in 2007 with a dizzying response to a geography question:

Then there’s Tara Connor, Miss USA 2006, who entered a drug rehabilitation program after drinking underage and testing positive for cocaine use.

On to the turning-over-a-new-leaf part.

I’m still unclear on where the directive is coming from, but it appears Miss America is modernizing.  The pageant doesn’t want the feather-haired, sweet-smiling clones of old, but rather the choppy-banged, individuality-embracers of new.

TLC is documenting this evolution on "Miss America: Reality Check", a show that is leading up to the actual pageant on Saturday night.  (Kudos to those marketing peeps at TLC for reeling us in a month before the actual event.)

I’ll skip hashing out all details of the show and get to the point: Yay.  Yay for getting Miss America with the program.  Although the point of the show is pretty shallow (there’s been no emphasis on character-building or the goodness the eventual winner will spread to the world) at least the pageant should be more fun to watch.

So maybe Saturday is a good night to revisit Miss America, if anything  to cheer on our own Miss New Hampshire Rachel Barker of Amherst.  (Anyone else think she looks something like former Olympic gymnast Dominique Moceanu?)

Who are you rooting for?