Public Lives

STILL CARRYING A TORCH FOR AIDS PREVENTION

Five years after the ultimate coronation, the crystal trophies this offbeat
beauty queen received for her AIDS activism before, during and after her
1998 reign as Miss America occupy an entire wall of curio cabinetry in her
one-room apartment. The statuary doesn't exactly outshine her, but it's
close, especially after she drapes that androgynous blue hoodie over the
sexy black camisole that left her feeling "underdressed for the occasion"
but worked fine earlier at an acting audition.

Waking up each day with the trophies an arm's length away gets Kate
Shindle, 26, motivated: because she's still an AIDS activist, because she
lost an uncle to the disease, because just two weeks ago she lost another
theater friend to it. Hence her decision to mobilize actors including
Anthony Rapp ("Rent") and Jai Rodriguez ("Queer Eye for the Straight Guy")
for a benefit performance of the feel-good Stephen Schwartz musical
"Children of Eden" at Riverside Church to commemorate World AIDS Day, Dec. 1.

So the French-fry-eating Miss America who took flak for her modest
two-piece in the swimsuit competition and is far too self-conscious - and
averse to shocking mom and dad - to conceive of doing an on-stage nude
scene to further her acting career, remains militant on AIDS. The pageant
platform wasn't just another pose or, as she says of the swimsuit phase of
competition, a necessary evil. "It was just an instinctive decision," Ms.
Shindle says of selecting AIDS prevention as the social issue she
emphasized at pageants. "I certainly was no expert on condoms and their
usage, but I felt that people needed to be educated. It's so frustrating
that even though it's a scientific fact that needle-exchange programs work,
that information is not getting disseminated, or it's rejected by the
communities that need to hear it. I felt like somebody from a conservative,
religious, suburban, white background could have a voice in a way that
traditional AIDS activists might not. The disease is still here, and for a
lot of people it means they're going to die."

The rhinestone tiara that was put atop Ms. Shindle's brunette hair when she
was crowned Miss America is not on display; gorgeous face, porcelain skin,
toned body, and halo of hair aside, she's not a beauty queen anymore.
Besides, the crown got a little dinged-up tagging along with the New
Jersey-born Ms. Shindle at the 20,000-miles-per-month pace demanded of Miss
Americas during their year, and she hasn't gotten around to getting it fixed.

"It's kind of a cool trophy, I guess, kind of a cool relic," says Ms.
Shindle, plopping herself, and a big water bottle periodically refilled
from the kitchen tap, onto a daybed sofa strewn with pillows and a matching
spread sewn from saris and ordered from a catalog. "But I don't really want
to look at it all the time, and frankly, I don't know where to put it."

When you are crammed, along with two acrobatic felines, in a
400-square-foot studio apartment in a Riverside Drive high-rise as you
pursue a career in theater and film (but refuse to be billed as "a former
Miss America"), all those twinkling crowns collected "back in the day," as
she calls her beauty-pageant past, just don't seem to justify their shelf
space. The tiara she acquired when she became Miss Illinois as a
Northwestern University drama student is confined to a shoe box in the closet.

Granted, the pageant prizes paid for her senior year of college with enough
left over to help finance her plunge into the Manhattan real estate market
in 2001; she recently sold the tiny studio and is trading up to a
two-bedroom in Washington Heights. She has already bought furniture and is
particularly excited about gaining some wall space. Right now the framed
review of her "Cabaret" performance is in the bathroom. The move is
imminent, which explains those cardboard packing boxes the cats are intent
on shredding; Vivvie is named for her grandmother, Vera. The other cat,
though female, is Howard Roark, for "The Fountainhead" character. Her
favorite book is "The Sound and The Fury"; she's no dolt, though she has
been taken for one.

MS. SHINDLE experienced something akin to identify theft as Miss America:
"There was a phase I went through where I thought it would drive me crazy
if I couldn't get away from the Miss America label. It's not that I'm
ashamed of it, but I've had to get beyond it and make my peace with it.
There's this whole negotiation that goes on of how much you want to let it
define you." And how much of her is Miss America? She fetchingly crinkles
her nose as if she has just come from a "Bewitched" audition: "Gosh, I
don't know, it's a fairly small percentage. Winning the competition is a
bit of an ego boost, but the job itself on a daily basis is not very good
for the ego. You have to shut out a lot of ambient noise."

She's still peeved at the university that refused to allow her to speak
about AIDS, not because of the topic, but because school officials said
their students couldn't relate to a Miss America; in other words, they
called her a bimbo.

Next month she's traveling - alone - to Rome for a vacation. On this Friday
night she's dateless: it's off to Federal Express to send an AIDS
fund-raising letter, then over to the gym to stay buff.

Lately, Ms. Shindle has been able to identify her roles by her fingernail
color: a bilious Broadway shade of green when she played Sally Bowles in
"Cabaret," petal pink this summer when she shot her first film, the comic
remake of "The Stepford Wives" starring Nicole Kidman and Bette Midler. Her
hair was dyed blonde for the part (she plucked out her first gray hair at
17, the same year she entered, and lost, her first local pageant), and she
went unrecognized until Ms. Midler, a pageant nut, zoned in.

"She asked if she could borrow my video of the year I won," says Ms.
Shindle, mildly astonished. "She says she loves Miss America."