Miss America Wins Contest In A See Through Gown

This is one way to impress the judges so they don't get you mixed up with all the other beauty queens strutting their stuff on the stage: Wear a see-through gown. That's just what Miss Michigan Kirsten Haglund, a 19-year-old aspiring Broadway star, did on Saturday night in Las Vegas and it paid off. She was crowned Miss America 2008.

It may have been inevitable that the blonde Haglund would win this competition, which was jazzed up with a new, hipper look. She has pageants in her blood. Not only is her mother an active pageant volunteer, but also her grandmother was a former Miss America contestant in 1944. The see-through gown was well planned. The dying enterprise had to be given new life, and the pageant officials did just that with sass, humor, blue jeans and racier outfits. How is this for sass? When Miss Utah Jill Stevens, who is an Army medic, failed to make the cut, she dropped and gave the audience pushups.

A student at the University of Cincinnati, Haglund sang "Over the Rainbow," but it was strutting in the black and gold bikini that was the real crowd-pleaser and may have clinched her the coveted title. that comes with a $50,000 scholarship and a year of travel. First runner-up was Miss Indiana Nicole Elizabeth Rash, while the second runner-up was Miss Washington Elyse Umemoto. Haglund's platform issue will be awareness of eating disorders, an illness from which she herself has suffered.