Ten Hut!

Stevens hopes her involvement will help change the perception of the Miss America Pageant as a beauty-first, brains-second competition—a view she herself held until two years ago. "I used to think these women were shallow and selfish and obsessed with their looks. It's actually the opposite. Their résumés are filled with a life of service," she says. "After meeting them, my whole perspective changed." Still, she adds, "the image of Miss America is too perfect, almost untouchable. I'm hoping to change that."

Stevens entered her first pageant in 2006 at Southern Utah University, where she was earning a nursing degree. She won, and went on to finish third that year in the Miss Utah contest. She says she decided to compete to utilize her skills as a motivational speaker—and, after all the soldiering, try something new. "I wanted to do something feminine, and I thought this was something that would bring out the woman in me," she says. She tried again this summer and won. Since then she's run the Marine Corps Marathon, visited soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, gone on a Miss America cruise and spent more than a week sequestered in a mansion outside Los Angeles, filming a reality show with other the Miss America contestants that will air Friday nights in January on TLC.

For someone more accustomed to spending time with men, Stevens held her own during the 10-day shoot, "though there were times when I had to retreat to my room for a break from all that estrogen," she says. Stevens even did her best to introduce the other women to military commands, cadences and late-night maneuvers. One evening Miss Utah broke out 52 camouflage kits, and the women, faces painted and sashes around their foreheads, crawled around the compound, "Rambo-style."

No one complained about her gung-ho military approach, but Stevens wondered if she had overdone it. "I was a little worried they would think I was exploiting the soldier thing for attention," she says. "I tend to relate everything to a combat zone." But she stopped worrying when Miss Tennessee sent her a reassuring text message days after the shoot ended. It read: "Lock and load."

© 2007