Local pageants discover that when it comes to finding contestants, here she isn’t.

Miss Gardena 1989, you need not give up your crown.

The city has canceled its pageant this year and extended the reign of the 1989 municipal beauty, Jodee Rapanot, because only four girls signed up for the 1990 contest.

That’s the worst turnout since the pageant began in 1955 and is two participants short of the number needed to crown a Miss Gardena and the traditional five runners-up.

The planned May 12 Miss Gardena coronation was originally postponed until October, but that five-month delay was not enough to interest more beauties, who must be Gardena residents and at least 17 years old. Now the pageant is rescheduled for next March 21.

“We just want more applications,” says Loyce Holt, Gardena’s recreation superintendent, who has been running the pageants for 22 years. The extra time will give organizers the opportunity to consider changes in the pageant such as loosening eligibility requirements to also include girls who work in Gardena.

In the mid-1970s, Holt says, the contest attracted as many as 28 contestants, but it’s been tougher to find enough participants in recent years.

“Women are more involved in the world than before,” Holt offers as an explanation for the decline, “and they’ve found other avenues of expressing themselves.”

Whether caused by a belief that pageants are a byproduct of more sexist days or just timidity on the part of potential participants, pageants throughout the South Bay report tough times attracting a court.

Take the South Bay chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, which sends a young woman every year to the countywide Miss Nisei Week competition.

A week before the group was to begin interviewing its candidates this year, only a handful of applications had trickled in.

One frantic organizer spotted an attractive Japanese-American girl behind the counter of a clothing store at the South Bay Galleria and immediately went into a Miss Nisei Week spiel. The girl stuck to selling clothes.

Inglewood, which had five contestants for this year’s Miss City of Inglewood pageant, is taking no chances next time around. Organizers have already begun a marketing blitz for next February’s pageant. They have distributed Miss City of Inglewood leaflets and delivered Miss City of Inglewood pep talks at area high school and colleges. Organizers collected $2,500 from the City Council last week for the pageant budget.

“The news is out! The search is on!” recruitment chairwoman Brenda Conyers wrote to Inglewood community leaders in a recent letter seeking “names, addresses and phone numbers of family members, friends, neighbors and acquaintances” who fit the bill.

Dana Maye, 18, entered last February’s Inglewood competition after her mother spotted an announcement on cable television. She practiced her ballet, worried about appearing in a bathing suit in front of all those people and eventually managed to become Miss City of Inglewood.

“Most girls don’t have a high concept of themselves,” said Maye, who is studying at Santa Monica College in hopes of becoming a broadcast journalist. “It’s the swimsuit and talent competitions that scare them away.”

Maye says she is proof of the transformational power of pageants.

“Before the pageant I looked in the mirror and said, ‘You’re OK. You’re OK.’ Now I have a lot more confidence in myself as far as appearance.”

Would she do it all again?

For sure.

Maye is already preparing herself--keeping up with current events, working on her dance and maintaining her diet--for the upcoming Miss Culver City and Miss Los Angeles pageants.

But future queens, beware! The experience is not pure pageantry for all. Last year’s Miss Torrance, Cheryl Anthony, was a Gardena resident. And what a royal stir that caused.

The Torrance City Council, miffed that Miss Torrances were not from Torrance anymore, stripped city funding from the contest--and pageant officials then changed the name to Miss Torrance-Beach Cities.

No funding is one thing, but the current Miss Torrance-Beach Cities, a Lawndale resident, was also told that she would no longer be treated as royalty at Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce functions.

Such parochialism exploded at this year’s Armed Forces Day Parade.

Because Miss Torrance-Beach Cities Connie Leamon did not receive an official invitation to the parade, eight police officers surrounded her and the 1956 Thunderbird whose owner had asked her to ride along.

They told her to remove her crown and sash. They told her to sit down inside the car and stop acting like a beauty queen.

All that drew royal tears, and she went home.