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The Dresser

Allan Brown, a beauty pageant Svengali, longs to see one of his "girls" wear the crown of Miss Florida.

TAMPA - "Okay, you got the keys?" Allan Brown calls to his housemate, Miss St. Petersburg. It's a Thursday afternoon in early June. The Miss Florida pageant starts in two weeks.

Miss St. Petersburg still needs one more outfit, for the finale on swimsuit night. And she needs a strapless bra to wear under her interview dress. And she has to get her nails done. . . . Oh, there's still so much to do.

So today Brown is taking her shopping. They're going to a little boutique he knows over on MacDill Avenue.

"I have the keys," Miss St. Petersburg calls out, jingling them above her head. "But do you think I need to bring my silver sandals?"

"Yes, and those turquoise pants," Brown answers. "We have to find you a top to wear with those, too. Something contemporary and fun.

"Oh, and you still need some accessories for your walk-on outfit the last night. Rhinestones, I'm thinking. They always show up so well in the lights."

Jeffrey Allan Brown has pictures of beauty queens all over his room: Miss Maine 2000 smiling sweetly from the middle of a bookshelf; Miss Kentucky 2000 beaming down from the top. The bookcase doesn't have any books. Only 8-by-10 photos, most of them signed, all in thick silver frames. Brown has hundreds of photos in albums under his bed. He has 18 displayed around his room, five of Miss St. Petersburg in various outfits and poses. He has photos filling his dresser. Photos sitting on the cabinet where he keeps his videos.

Brown has more than 1,000 videos. He gets three or four every month. He orders them on the Internet sometimes. Mostly, he trades homemade tapes. Tapes of state beauty pageants, Miss America, Miss USA. Tapes dating to 1974.

He started collecting in college, just for fun. He loved seeing the girls - that's what the pageant people call them - waltz down the runways, admiring them in their shimmering evening gowns, looking at the stage lights glittering off their tiaras.

Then he got obsessed. He started studying the tapes, like an athlete watches game films. He analyzes how winners wear their hair, whether they wear one-piece swimsuits or two, red lipstick or pink. He memorizes interview questions and answers: What is more detrimental to society, racism or sexism? Could you ever have a serious relationship with someone who has a physical disability? He practices rating the contestants in a green notebook. He compares his scores with the judges'.

He knows his stats, too, as well as any baseball junkie. He can tell you, off the top of his head, that only one Miss America in the past 14 years has been blond, that Texas hasn't had a Miss America in 28 years.

"Florida has only had one Miss America, in 1993," he says.

Brown is 39. He has thick hair, dyed strawberry blond, cropped short and slightly spiked. Tortoise-shell glasses frame his blue eyes and pale lashes. He lives in a three-bedroom house off Dale Mabry with his roommate, Drew, and, for now, Miss St. Petersburg in the spare room.

In pageant parlance, he's a "dresser," a Svengali who helps contestants pick out their outfits, practice their performances and rehearse their answers. He pays his bills by waiting tables at First Watch restaurant. Breakfast and lunch. But that's not his life.

Helping Miss St. Petersburg become Miss Florida, and then Miss America - this is his life.

Miss St. Petersburg is Shauna Pender. She's 23. Her shiny chestnut hair curves over her slender shoulders. Her emerald eyes sparkle under lavender shadow. High cheekbones frame her perfect nose. Full lips frame her perfect teeth.

She's 5 feet 9. The same height as Brown.

Like him, she got into pageants when she was in college. She won Miss Tallahassee her freshman year at Florida State. She paid her way through school with scholarship money she won doing pageants. She majored in theater.

She has held five crowns: Miss Tallahassee 1998, Miss Azalea Florida 2000, Miss West Coast Florida 2001, Miss Panama City 2002 and Miss St. Petersburg, where she was selected over 12 other women.

The past two years, Pender has been first runner-up for Miss Florida. Two years in a row she has had to clap and smile and hug another girl who won the title she wanted. Brown has clapped and smiled in the audience, too. And afterward he has hugged her and promised her next time. Next time.

This year is Pender's last chance to compete for Miss America. She turns 24 in July, and that's the cutoff age for contestants.

Brown invited her to stay with him for a couple of weeks before the pageant so he could help her full time, get her ready. Sort of a beauty pageant boot camp.

Pender had been living in New York, staying with her sister while she takes acting classes and tries out for soap operas. She got a short stint as a physical trainer on All My Children. She played a victim of PMS in a pharmaceutical ad.

Brown needed her closer to him so they could get her wardrobe ready and practice her interview answers and her talent before the stage pageant. Pender sings. She's going to do Before Your Love by American Idol star Kelly Clarkson.

"We've got 42 girls going for Miss Florida," Brown says. "Florida is one of the most competitive states. Miss Florida almost always finishes in the top 10 for Miss America."

This year, Brown says, Pender is ready. "She's got more confidence, more poise," he says. "Going out into the real world has been good for her."

"Allan has helped me so much," Pender says. "He is someone any girl would be happy to have as her ED."

Pender calls Brown her ED. Executive Director. It's a volunteer post.

It's Brown's favorite job.

He put his career on hold to do this.

They get to Material Girls Boutique just after 4 p.m. Pender parks out front. Brown opens the shop door for her.

In the back room, saleswoman Brenda Piccirillo is waiting. A pageant contestant herself, she holds the crown of Miss Central Florida of America. She has pulled out a few outfits and picked out earrings to match. She hugs Brown.

"You look great," Brown tells her. "Have you lost weight?"

Brown doesn't worry about his weight. He eats french fries and pizza and drinks Pepsi. But the next week, the week before the state pageant, he'll go on Slim-Fast. "I don't want the junk food around to tempt Shauna," he says. "It's sort of a sympathy/support thing."

Carole Holsonback is at the boutique, too. She was co-director of this year's Miss St. Petersburg pageant with Brown. She is also helping Pender get ready for the state competition.

Pender, meanwhile, has found the white dress with the lace overlay that Miss Central Florida of America laid out. It is strapless and has a short skirt in front. In back, a train dips to the floor in a long, flowing V. "Oh my gosh! That's so great! I have to try this on!" Pender squeals.

Brown walks over to inspect. "This is hot," he agrees, turning the hanger. "Loving it."

Brown and Pender met two years ago at the Miss West Coast Florida pageant. He was directing that competition. He spent $2,000 of his savings to put it on.

"A lot of these local pageants are open," Brown says. "You don't have to live there. So girls from anywhere in the state can compete." That's why Pender has been Miss Just About Everywhere.

Brown also judges pageants. The South Florida Fair Queen, Miss University of Central Florida. All his pageant work is unpaid.

"I guess I'm spending about 40 hours a week with Shauna right now. This is the most intense time for us," he says. "All the shopping, the rehearsals, all the nerves."

The dress Pender takes into the dressing room costs $898. She'll have it on for 10 minutes max, while she strolls across the stage.

Sometimes the boutiques give her discounts or let her borrow the dresses. Sometimes Pender's mom or her handlers help pay.

Brown likes to shop for himself, too. But he doesn't look for anything this fancy - or expensive. "I buy my stuff mostly at Old Navy and Burlington Coat Factory," he says. "I can't afford much better for me.

"But I did splurge and buy myself a nice suit for the Miss Florida pageant. Another pageant director helped me pick it out. It's a wool blend with a long, black jacket. Very contemporary. Very fun."

Brown was a reporter for a small weekly paper in Ohio. He got to cover the Miss Ohio pageant once. But he decided that journalism's hours were too long, the demands too great.

"I needed more free time to help out with the pageants," he says from a cream leather sofa by the dressing room. "That's why I wait tables at a breakfast place. So I can have the afternoons off, to do stuff like this."

Pender emerges from behind the pink curtains, her tanning booth-bronzed shoulders arching above the bodice. White lace loops across her willowy waist and spills down to her defined shins.

"Oh my gosh! I'm in love with this!" she coos, twirling in front of the full-length mirror.

Brown gets off the couch to get a better view. He walks around her, looks her up and down. Pender lifts her long hair, to see what it would look like pinned up with that dress. "You'll need beaded earrings, silver accents. And you'll wear your hair down," Brown says. "It's gorgeous."

"I feel like a diva," Pender says, staring at her reflection.

"I knew you would love it," Brown says. "Now try the blue one."

Ask Brown why he does this and he'll look at you and blink. He'll make you feel like that's a totally stupid question. Then he'll laugh.

"There are times I wonder that myself," he'll say. Then he'll pause. Push up his big glasses.

"Some people go fishing or play golf or whatever. This is just another hobby, I guess."

He's not trying to date Pender. "I'm gay," he says. He's only trying to help.

Brown grew up in Toledo, Ohio. He was an only child. Both his parents are dead. He moved to Tampa 11 years ago to find warmer weather.

"When I got here from Ohio, I didn't know anyone," he says. "I started going to the pageants, meeting people.

"We get real close at these things."

Most of Brown's friends are people he has met through pageants. Most are women. They're other judges, directors and volunteers. Mothers of contestants. And, of course, the girls.

Brown has helped dozens over the past decade. The ones who win he calls his "titleholders." He frames their photos and puts them up in his room. He has never had a Miss Florida.

This year he has two shots at the title. Along with Pender he's helping Suzanne Dani'L Metzler. She's 22. She's Miss Pinellas County. She still needs a dress for her talent portion.

"I enjoy seeing how these girls grow from one pageant to the next. I become friends with them. They're like my family," Brown says.

"I feel proud when I see them go on and become successful.

"One titleholder I had is now the lead understudy in The Lion King."

Brown doesn't want to write for newspapers anymore. He might go into politics, he says. Maybe help out on a presidential campaign.

But he can't commit himself to anything for a while. First he has to get through the Miss Florida pageant. Then, he hopes, he'll go to Atlantic City in September to see Miss America.

If Pender gets to go, he'll be there for sure. But he won't get to be her ED. He won't even be able to talk to her before the pageant, go to her floor of the hotel or help her with her hair.

For the Miss America pageant, all the contestants' companions have to be women. For the purity of the girls, you see.

Brown will be in the audience. Each time Pender takes the stage, he'll clap louder than anyone.

And, just like her, his hands will be sweating.

The Miss Florida pageant is Wednesday through Saturday at the Mahaffey Theater at Bayfront Center in St. Petersburg. Tickets cost $15 for the first two days, $30 for Friday night's semifinals and $45 for Saturday's final. For more information, go to www.missflorida.org