Miss America is talking about condoms.
“When I talk at high schools and junior highs, I always talk about safe sex,” says Leanza Cornett, the reigning beauty queen. “I try to be candid. I say, `Ladies, don’t give him love unless he wears a glove.’ And `Gentlemen, if you love her, wear a cover.’ “
Obviously, this is not your mother’s Miss America pageant anymore.
“About four years ago, an official platform program was implemented,” Cornett says. “Some of the other platforms have been domestic violence or parental intervention in education. This is the first year that AIDS has been addressed. And it’s proved to be helpful, in terms of bringing the pageant into the ’90s. Certainly, focusing on the disease brings the Miss America pageant into a more controversial light. But it’s less controversial than the swimsuit competition. It’s a different kind of controversy-less shallow, more positive.”
Promoting “AIDS Affects All,” her platform of AIDS awareness and assistance, Cornett travels 20,000 miles each month, appearing in a different city every other day.
“I get tired just saying that,” she concedes with a laugh. “I’ve been in pretty much every situation you can think of: large cities and very small towns. “I do about three or four high schools a week. Some junior highs. Also, I speak to various organizations.”
Cornett has gone to the United States Capitol, where she lobbied congressmen for their support of AIDS Prevention legislation. She has written her own AIDS Prevention Guide, “Choose to Be Safe,” which she distributes everywhere she goes. Disarmingly frank, it talks about latex condoms, Nonoxynol-9 and the importance of not sharing needles, even for ear-piercing.
Cornett is at first glance an unlikely candidate to tackle such a subject. She looks like what she is-a 21-year-old from Florida who has worked at Disney World and hopes to pursue a theatrical career. But when she speaks, the picture changes focus. She is poised, well-spoken and unembarrassed promoting her platform.
“Definitely there was resistance to my tackling the subject of AIDS awareness,” she says, “even by my parents, who at first advised me to take a safer topic, something less controversial. But in this last year they have come full circle.”
Cornett became interested in AIDS as a topic two years ago.
When a cast member Cornett had been working with in a play was diagnosed, she decided to become an AIDS volunteer.
“Of course, it snowballed. Once you get one foot in the water, you can’t help but get involved, especially when you are dealing with people in need. I just felt it was my calling.”
Cornett started her volunteer work at a service organization in Orlando. There she was set apart from the clients, answering phones and working with computers. Then she read about Serenity House, a pediatric foster house for children with AIDS. She decided to volunteer there, working one-on-one with people who had the disease.
“That really humanized AIDS for me,” she says. “At first, I thought, `Oh, I can handle this.’ I went in, and on my first day at Serenity House I met maybe seven children, 5 years old and younger, who had AIDS. Basically what I would do is babysit, take them swimming, take them to the zoo, sit with them and watch movies. They were missing out on so much of their childhoods by visiting clinics and being in the hospital. I don’t have any brothers or sisters; these kids taught me a lot about life.”
Cornett grew up in Big Stone Gap, population 6,000, in southwestern Virginia. Big Stone Gap is a coal mining town, “a very poor town in many ways,” Cornett says, “but one that is very rich with wonderful people.”
Her unusual first name comes from a grandmother who is part American Indian: “It means `Contented One’-kind of ironic, isn’t it? I mean, I have achieved contentment, but I don’t ever want to be satisfied. I love my name now, but I hated it growing up. There were never any of those little key chains with my name on them.”
When she was 13 her family moved to Florida-first Jacksonville, then Orlando. There, her parents opened a fast-food Greek restaurant, “although right now, they’re in the process of selling that business and making big changes in their lives,” Cornett says.
As a little girl, she never particulary yearned to become Miss America, but she was always attracted to show business: “For as long as I can remember, I’ve been singing and dancing, putting on plays. I’ve had eight years of voice training. My main goal is being on the Broadway stage.”
Not until Cornett needed scholarship money (she attended Jacksonville University and Rollins College, in Orlando, majoring in communications) did she become interested in the Miss America contest, with a $35,000 scholarship as top prize.
She entered the Miss Jacksonville contest when she was 17. A year later she was the first runnerup in the Miss Florida contest, and the year after that she was Miss Florida, on her way to Atlantic City.
She had a strong showing in the talent competition, where she sang a show tune, “A New Life.” “It’s about the hopes and dreams we all have and how certain hopes and dreams don’t work out,” she says; it helped her win the scholarship money.
“I also thought, `What a great opportunity to have a national voice, to speak out and be heard,’ ” Cornett says.
“There are people who don’t want to believe that Miss America can say these things. My father is a prime example. He said, `I grew up with the Miss America pageant, and I just don’t know if I want her to say those kind of things.’
“He knows it’s important. But, like a great many people, he would rather it would be somebody else saying it. Somebody like Liz Taylor or Magic Johnson. And they are great AIDS activists, and they are doing great things. But because of the title I am invited to a lot of places that an AIDS activist, even Liz Taylor or Magic Johnson, wouldn’t be able to go.”
Conversely, there have been places where Cornett has not been invited-or, more precisely, has been uninvited because of her platform, regardless of her Miss America title.
“There was a church in my home town of Orlando, and I had been invited there in May. Then, all of a sudden, they had a lot of questions for me: What was I going to talk about? Am I a Christian? Did I hold certain beliefs? Exactly what denomination did I belong to? And I answered all their questions. I thought it was invasive, but I also thought that if I could go to a church and talk about AIDS, that would be a big step.”
Finally, Cornett called the man in charge of her appearance and said, “Let’s get this settled. I said, `Yes, I would be talking about AIDS.’ I said that I could bring it up as a testimonial from my own life and how I grew up in the church and that I felt that all the churches needed to open their eyes and their arms. That there were a lot of things that they could doing and aren’t.”
“And he told me, `I’m really sorry, but that date is closed. Maybe later this summer we can bring you in.’ “
That wasn’t good enough for Cornett: “I told him I wasn’t interested. I can certainly be flexible, especially within the confines of a church, but I’m not going to go in and have walls around me. I said, `You are keeping your congregation from hearing a very important message, and I hope you’re willing to face up to that-and to understand what responsibilities you have shirked.’ “
Pretty strong talk from Miss America.
“Oh, I’m very opinionated,” says Cornett with a bit of understatement. “I think it comes from being an only child and, therefore, always being encouraged and supported in the things I believed in.”
