Beauty queen Carrie Prejean, the former Miss California who became the darling of conservatives when she spoke out against gay marriage at this year’s Miss USA pageant, has another work getting her plenty of attention. No, it’s not her memoir, the defiantly titled “Still Standing,” that has people talking. It’s a sex tape that few have seen, but that plenty of people are jabbering about.
On Tuesday, Prejean herself went on television news shows and talked about the sex tape. In this interview with NBC’s “Today” show, Prejean defended herself and said that “nothing is private anymore.”
“It was me by myself, there was no one else with me, I was not having sex,” she told NBC News. “I sent it to my boyfriend at the time. I was a teenager, I cared about him, I trusted him.”
She added that it was “for private use” but that making the solo sex video was the “biggest mistake of my life.”
Prejean added that she does not know how officials with Miss California got the solo sex tape, as was reported gleefully in recent days by celebrity website TMZ.
One reason the video is just being talked about — and not viewed on the Web or DVD or any other medium — is that Prejean was apparently 17 at the time, which would make her underage and a crime to distribute the footage.
On “Today,” Prejean said she has been under attack for criticizing gay marriage at Miss USA, and she hit many of the conservative talking points, slamming the news media for being too “liberal,” name checking Sarah Palin and taking a glancing shot at right wing punching bag Keith Olbermann.
Meanwhile, some of Prejean’s critics are sharpening their knives for her.
Business mogul Donald Trump, who runs the Miss USA pageant, was one of those critical of Prejean. In her book, the beauty queen said that Trump would divide beauty contestants based on looks.
Wait a minute, isn’t that a big part of what beauty pageants are about? … Beauty?
The Donald wasn’t having any of Prejean’s accusations. “Carrie should be ashamed of herself,” he told celebrity news show Extra. “… I don’t stand the ones that are less attractive to one side, and the beautiful ones on the other side. It was total nonsense — it was fiction in her imagination.”
And model Shanna Moakler, who left her job as an official at Miss California but came back after Prejean was replaced by another woman, told chat show host Wendy Williams that despite Prejean’s comments that she was targeted based on her views on gay marriage, the problem was that she breached her contract by posing topless and not being truthful about that to pageant officials.
“We have tons of religious conservative beauty queens all over the country, there has never been a beauty queen who has been dethroned because of her religious views,” Moakler told Williams. “But there have been many that have their crowns taken away for breaching their contract.”
But has there been a beauty queen who has turned a normally staid beauty pageant question-and-answer into a book deal and more? No, it seems Prejean has accomplished that one all by herself, going solo.
World Travel Market was treated to a large sprinkling of glamour on day two as 120 finalists from Miss World beauty pageant made a special guest appearance to present a donation from the World Travel Awards to water aid charity Just a Drop.
The collection for Just a Drop was made at the World Travel Awards 2009 Grand Final on Sunday, which was held at the Grosvenor House Hotel, a JW Marriott Hotel.
The contribution made on the evening compliments the “Beauty with a Purpose” programme, which this year has raised £1 million to support surgical, nutritional and educational projects in Haiti, Palau, Philippines, Ghana and India.
