Boy it’s hard to be a beauty queen these days. You drink, you party, you take some pills, and then have to hug Donald Trump. Unfortunately it looks like things aren’t getting any easier for those cursed with being the prettiest girl in the room.

Witness backstabery at it’s finest (yeah that’s a word… now). Miss New Jersey, Amy Polumbo, announced at a press conference on Thursday that an anonymous person has threatened her, saying that if she doesn’t relinquish her crown by today, they will release potentially embarrassing photos.

“Polumbo’s lawyer, Anthony Caruso, said that starting last week, Polumbo, her family and officials in the Miss New Jersey Education Foundation received packages with pictures of her and the demand that she resign by Friday.

Caruso said the pictures show her with some friends and some may have been photos that she posted years ago on a private Internet site.

Did they reveal more skin than a pageant-sanctioned swimsuit? College students behaving badly, perhaps? Caruso would not say.

‘I don’t think the photos are that bad,’ Caruso said. ‘The people posting this blackmail scheme are trying to make these photos out to be worse than I think they are.’

He said he couldn’t comment further because more photos could arrive and change everything.”

[From Newsday]

I think it’s good that she’s fighting back. A lot of people would feel pressured to give in. You can’t help but wonder what Miss New Jersey runner-up Ronica Licciardello has to think about all this. If Polumbo did surrender her crown, then she would be crowned in her place. According to the Newark Star Ledger, when “Reached by phone at her Mount Laurel home today, Licciardello told the Associated Press she had not heard of the scandal. ‘I hope this situation is resolved in the best way possible,’ she said.”

Of course it’s likely that whoever is blackmailing Polumbo simply wants to hurt her, and it has nothing to do with any of the other contestants. Yet the evil part of me really wants to see these pictures. Don’t give in! Show us the photos!

Pictures from Wagner.edu and Philly.com