Explaining the Name Change for Torrance Area Pageant

The Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce has disinvited Miss Torrance-Beach Cities (formerly known as Miss Torrance) from attending monthly chamber mixers and ribbon cuttings because, according to chamber Manager Barbara Glennie, the Miss Torrance-Beach Cities Pageant is a regional pageant and no longer strictly a Torrance pageant (Times, March 16).

This information came to me in a telephone call from Ms. Glennie on March 8, 1990, and was a total surprise to me. I learned later that this decision was made by the executive committee of the Torrance chamber. No one from that committee ever asked me why we changed our name, nor did Barbara Glennie.

We changed our name in order to attract more contestants. Our experience had been that Torrance residents did not turn out in sufficient numbers to make a viable pageant. In 1989, for example, there was only one contestant from Torrance. In 1990, there were six, but three of those were eliminated in the preliminary competition for a variety of reasons; thus we ended up with nine finalists, three of whom were Torrance residents. The judges, all of whom were very experienced and certified Miss America judges, ruled that Connie Leamon, who happens to be from Lawndale, was the best qualified contestant to compete in the Miss California Pageant.

The Miss America Pageant seeks to make every young woman in America eligible to be Miss America. Currently in California, there are 42 franchises representing cities and counties statewide. If each of these franchises were to limit their contestants only to residents of their individual cities, California would not have a true representative at the Miss America Pageant. We are unable to comply with the city of Torrance’s and the chamber’s request to limit our contestants only to residents of Torrance because such a restriction would place us in conflict with the rules and the intent of the Miss America pageant.

Several other questions nag at me with regard to the chamber’s attitude. First, what will the chamber gain by making this kind of arbitrary decision against a nonprofit community group? It hasn’t saved itself any money, because it never contributed any to us. And the negative publicity surrounding this incident has not helped its image in the business community. Second, the chamber claims that we don’t represent the interests of Torrance. However, as the local franchisee of the Miss America pageant for the Torrance area, Miss Torrance-Beach Cities does indeed represent Torrance in the Miss California pageant--as we have for the last 24 years. Third, how is it that the chamber believes it has the authority to tell us how we are going to determine our eligibility, or by what name we are going to be known. Does the chamber presume to tell any other organization in the community how it can run its business or what name it can call itself? I think not.

The chamber’s role in Torrance is to represent the interests of business. Business cannot afford to discriminate against or offend anyone in the community--not any individual, nor any business, nor any profit or nonprofit group in the community. By its discriminatory attitude and actions toward the Miss Torrance-Beach Cities pageant, the chamber has offended me, as a business person and as one of its own members, and it has offended Connie Leamon, the reigning Miss Torrance-Beach Cities. Unless this situation is resolved in the pageant’s favor, my continued membership would place me directly in a conflict of interest situation, and thus I would not be able to continue it.

ANDREA REEDER

Executive Director

Miss Torrance-Beach

Cities Pageant