HAPPY NEW YEAR
T H E
CAPITAL®
G•R•I•L •„L • E
approximately 10 judges, will be expe-
riencing nonstop togetherness.
"These girls will go through a gru-
eling seven-day period where they are
being assessed every minute," reports
Jacobs. "There will be lunches, din-
ners, cocktail parties and meetings,
and they will be doing an awful lot of
impromptu speaking and mingling.
"I will be watching them to see
how they interact and work the
crowd. The first six seconds I meet the
girls is very important. Did they make
eye contact? Did they give a firm
handshake? Did they smile?"
Powerful vocal delivery also is a
part of the winning equation. "I am
looking for someone who speaks in
well-organized sentences and who
doesn't qualify everything she says,"
adds Jacobs. "These are all first and
lasting impressions."
Jacobs acknowledges that very few
Jewish women vie for the jeweled
crown. "I think it's because the
emphasis for Jewish girls has been on
brains, and we somehow don't think
that beauty and brains go together.
Jewish mothers aren't telling their
daughters to go out and be Miss
America — they are telling them to be
doctorg and lawyers.
"We think that if we focus on beau-
ty it somehow trivializes brains," says
Jacobs, "but that's not true. In the
Miss America pageant, over $32 mil-
lion is given away in scholarship
money. So it isn't about just being
pretty. It's also about being bright."
But competing in pageants taught
Jacobs "the importance of personal
packaging," she says. "Early on I
learned it's often not what you say, but
how you look and sound when you
are delivering the message."
Jacobs' pageant experience also
influenced her decision to pursue a
career in television, and later in public
.
relations. Right out of college, she
landed jobs as a news anchor and a
weather girl in Lansing, Flint and
Jackson.
With an equal passion for the per-
forming arts, Jacobs auditioned for a
part in Do Black Patent Leather Shoes
Really Reflect Up? As a member of the
road company, she wound up with a
run at the Birmingham Theatre and a
short stint on Broadway.
When her theatrical career ended,
Jacobs wanted to shift gears and make
use of the communication skills she'd
learned from all her endeavors. "A
friend of mine suggested that with my
combination of television news and
professional theater experience, I
might be well-suited to head the
media department of a PR firm, and I
took her advice," she says.
After acquiring a loyal clientele at
another agency, Jacobs started her own
business. That was 11 years ago, and
since then she has made her mark in
the industry, specializing in improving
the presentation and interviewing
skills of successful_professionals.
She directs seminars on how to get
ahead, helps launch new products and
teaches men and women how to com-
municate with confidence. Her clients
include Harvard Medical School, the
Sarah Lee Corporation, Colgate-
Palmolive and Johnson & Johnson.
"It's all about establishing relation-
ships," says Jacobs. "You have to try to
reach out."
In fact, she adds, this is a quality
the new Miss America should possess.
"Before I cast my vote on Sept. 19, I
am going to make sure that when she
uses pronouns, it's not "I, me, and
mine" but "we, us and ours." ❑
"The Miss America Pageant" airs 9
p.m. Saturday, Sept. 19, on ABC.
The One And Only
Jewish miss America
I is been over 50 years since
Bess Myerson walked down
the runway in Atlantic City
wearing the coveted Miss
America crown.
"Yet, after all these years, we still
associate Bess Myerson with Miss
America, more than any other win-
ner," says Susan Dworkin, author of
Miss America, 1945: Bess Myerson
Own Story.
"I think it's because she has
accomplished so many remarkable
things, because she was and is the
only Jewish woman to hold the title
and because of the anti-Semitic cli-
mate of the country at that time."
Dworkin's biography about
Myerson and how she went from
the Sholem Aleichem housing pro-
jects in the Bronx to Atlantic City
was originally published in 1987.
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calm...
Fresh Seafood
Somerset Collection North
2800 West Big Beaver Road
Troy, Michigan 48084
(248) 649-5300
Jane Rayburn
The Detroit News
"The national
reputation of The
Capital Grille has
crowds beating
down the doors."
Lunch: Monday through Saturday,
.
1130 am unti13:00 pm
Dinner: Monday through Thursday,
5:00 pm- 10:00 pm
Friday and Saturday,
5:00 pm- 11:00 pm
Sunday: 3:00 pm - 9:00 pm
"The Capital Grille
is the place to see
and be seen."
The New York Times
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41602 W. 10 Mile Rd.
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Detroit Jewish News
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