Vanessa Williams, who stepped down as Miss America in 1984, to judge this year’s pageant

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. So on the day after it was announced that entertainer Vanessa Williams will be the head judge of Sunday night’s Miss America Pageant after resigning as Miss America in 1984 amid a scandal involving the unauthorized publication of sexually explicit photos the story of her return and redemption still had legs.

At a news conference at Boardwalk Hall on Wednesday to announce a seven-judge panel that will decide the winners during three nights of preliminary competitions the prelims are a run-up to the actual pageant that will air live Sunday night on ABC one of the judges brought up Williams’ return.

While no one in the room gasped when Williams’ name was mentioned at the sparsely attended news conference to introduce the panel of talented but not necessarily well-known personalities, there seemed to be a collective deep breath taken among the assembled pageant people.

But there is also an “evolution” that will “continue to make the pageant relevant” as it moves forward, noted Noah Alexander, one of the preliminary judges, who was the first to mention Williams.

“It’s a new world and it shows how far the Miss America Organization has come ... how a young woman can succeed after overcoming adversity to do anything she wants to do. The pageant has come a long way and is relevant in the past, the present and the future,” said Alexander, who is noted for being one of the highest-awarded sales professionals in the United States for the men’s fashion house Ermenegildo Zegna.

In the 31 years since the scandal, Williams has appeared in pageant ephemera as little more than an asterisked footnote on lists of pageant winners.

But Williams, as Miss New York, was all of 21 when she wowed the judges with her vocal talent, stunning looks, and graceful stage presence and became the first African-American Miss America. Ten months into her reign, she forfeited her crown for violating a moral-turpitude clause in her contract with the pageant because before she had even entered the pageant world, she had posed for explicit photos during a modeling shoot.

She said at the time that she was told by the photographer the photos were for an artsy technique being shot in silhouette and would never be published. The photographer apparently later released the grainy, black-and-white photos without Williams’ permission and they were published in Penthouse magazine.

Runner-up Suzette Charles, who had served as Miss New Jersey that year, became Williams’ replacement.

But Williams, who in a “Good Morning America interview earlier this week called the entire debacle one of the “problems” she has had to deal with, has gone on to have an illustrious career and has earned multiple Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Award nominations.

Pageant executive chairman and CEO Sam Haskell said in a statement this week that Williams’ participation this Sunday signals that the pageant wants to “move forward and put the past behind us.”

Reality star Jenni Pulos, an Emmy-nominated co-producer and personality on the Bravo network’s shows “Flipping Out” and “Interior Therapy who is also one of the judges for the preliminary competitions, agreed with the concept of moving forward.

“To be a successful person, you have to embrace failure. But ultimately, it’s never about the failure. ... It’s about how you pull yourself up and move on,” said Pulos, who said she was once humiliated by seeing DVDs being sold at Target of the “Flipping Out” series that featured episodes about her divorce.

The humiliation, she said, ultimately motivated her to continue to push forward in her career by producing reality series and writing a couple of books including a children’s book.

“It’s almost impossible not to make some mistakes in your life,” Pulos said. “But I think what we are looking at here is how Vanessa bounced back and has ultimately had an amazing career.”

Josh Randle, the pageant’s chief operating officer, said Wednesday that the moral-turpitude clause was still included in the contract that contestants sign and serves as a “guiding light” for the young women.

“We are very proud of Vanessa and proud to have her back,” Randle said.

But Amanda Bower, a marketing and advertising communications professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., who is an expert in integrated marketing and has written extensively about high-profile advertising during events like the Super Bowl, said bringing Williams back into the fold was nothing more than a ploy to attract attention and viewers to the pageant.

“The Miss America pageant certainly needs Vanessa Williams a lot more than Vanessa Williams needs the Miss America pageant,” Bowers said. “The whole thing is an ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ ideal in a Kim Kardashian world. So it’s really less of a redemption story for Vanessa Williams than it is a relevance story for the Miss America Pageant.”

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