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"   When you have to burp, you burp. And then you say, &amp;quot;Excuse me&amp;quot; very politely.  I don&amp;#039;t know if it&amp;#039;s true, but I once heard the odds are greater that a boy will become a Super Bowl quarterback than a girl will become Miss America.  Confidence in its basic form is loving who you are.  Makeup artists will often try to cover up the scar on my forehead or my freckles. I say, &amp;quot;No, no, those are parts of me.&amp;quot;  My teeth are another imperfection. We were playing tag at school and I was a clumsy kid. There were these huge pillars, solid concrete, and I ran into one of them. Smack. Right in the face. I had just gotten my permanent teeth, and I chipped half off all four in front. The bottoms are filled in with porcelain.  The best advice I ever received about competition is: You&amp;#039;re only competing against yourself.  How can you not cry?  The key to milking a cow is you don&amp;#039;t actually pull your hand down; you move your fingers. You&amp;#039;ve got to press the milk out.  I can remember one time we were having sandwiches at Quiznos. I was starving, and I started unwrapping a foot-long. This lady says, &amp;quot;Oh, my goodness. She&amp;#039;s eating! Let me go get a camera.&amp;quot;  There are a lot of critics in &amp;quot;pageant world.&amp;quot;  Only eighty-three women have ever held the title. How cool is that?  I&amp;#039;m a meat-and-potatoes girl. If you tried to get me to make a cr\u00E8me br\u00FBl\u00E9e, I&amp;#039;d have no idea where to start. Put me in a garden and I&amp;#039;ll make you a feast.  I would come home from school when something bad happened and vent. My mom would say, &amp;quot;Okay, you have one minute left of being negative and then you have to say something positive.&amp;quot;  In our society, sex is thrown around way too much. It&amp;#039;s way too casual. It has no meaning.  I&amp;#039;m saving myself for marriage. I don&amp;#039;t promote that \u2014 it&amp;#039;s a personal choice. I would never judge someone because they chose differently.  I would never go bungee jumping. But I&amp;#039;ll take a calculated risk if it means that I&amp;#039;ll better myself in the end.  People kill for money. People steal for money. People do horrible, horrible things for a piece of paper that can burn. It can be torn in half. It can be destroyed. I pray that God never blesses me with a lot of money, because I never want to have to know what to do with it.   I still wear hand-me-down clothes. I buy my shoes from Marshalls and T. J. Maxx because I would never buy them at full price. That stuff means nothing to me, so I don&amp;#039;t put any pride in it.  The best thing about Indiana is that people have their priorities straight.  Respect all comes down to appreciation.  We&amp;#039;re completely different organizations. Miss America came first. We were started in 1921. We&amp;#039;re a nonprofit scholarship organization. We provide $45 million a year to the twelve thousand women who compete. Miss USA gets the opportunity to live in New York. She gets modeling contracts, acting lessons, and so forth. You can&amp;#039;t compare the pageants. It&amp;#039;s not even apples and oranges. It&amp;#039;s like comparing a fruit and a vegetable.  Believing without seeing. I guess that&amp;#039;s why they call it faith.  I want a home where people can come in, take their shoes off, and sit on the floor. Not a place where you can&amp;#039;t touch anything because it&amp;#039;s like a museum.  Before I started dating Brian, I dated a guy named Trent. He was my best friend, a football player. He was probably six-four, 250. I&amp;#039;m five-five, 115. We went to Red Lobster during all-you-can-eat shrimp to have an eating contest. I was determined to beat him. He stopped at the point where he was ready to get sick. I ate one more.  If you think this organization degrades women, I encourage you to get to know even one of the contestants.   I&amp;#039;ve wanted to have Katie Couric&amp;#039;s job ever since I was in eighth grade.   You cannot wear the crown after your year is over. RELATED LINKS:  EARLIER: Embarrassing Moments from Beautiful Beauty Queens  Important Americans on What It Means to Be American All-American Wisdom From Headliners in All 50 States  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a6767/katie-stam-0110/>