Pitbull in a swimsuit: Exclusive pictures show Sarah Palin's days as a beauty queen

By Caroline Graham, Mail on Sunday LA Correspondent
Updated: 21:19 EDT, 28 September 2008

With her bouffant hair as rigidly fixed as her smile, Sarah Palin’s only worry back in 1984 was whether two carefully-positioned sticking plasters under her Baywatch-style swimsuit would preserve her modesty.

These revealing pictures show the American Vice-Presidential candidate – and self-styled ‘pitbull in lipstick’ – when she was just an anonymous beauty queen hopeful in white plastic shoes.

They were taken at the Miss Alaska contest where Palin was crowned Miss Congeniality, and were given exclusively to The Mail on Sunday by fellow contestant Pamela Massey.

Stiff competition: a lacquered Sarah Palin competing in the Miss Alaska pageant

Mrs Massey remembers the leading Republican well, and revealed: ‘We beauty queens had all sorts of tricks in those days. One was to put sticking plasters over our nipples to make sure we didn’t reveal too much during the swimsuit round.

‘The last thing you wanted in a cold Alaskan auditorium was for your modesty to be compromised. Sarah, like all the girls, covered hers with a couple of Band-Aids. She also used a whole can of Aqua Net hairspray. An Alaskan gale wouldn’t have moved a hair on her head.’

Palin was 20 – and still four years away from marrying her childhood sweetheart Todd Palin – when she represented her hometown of Wasilla under her maiden name of Heath.

The right note: Palin played the flute in the talent round of the contest

Mrs Massey said: ‘She was poised and confident even back then. She had a lovely outgoing personality and was lots of fun. There were 16 of us in the pageant and we all shared a modest house in Anchorage for five days.

'The lucky girls slept in the two bedrooms. The rest of us, Sarah included, slept on makeshift beds in the living room. We shared two bathrooms so there was constant fighting over whose turn it was.

'It was all very innocent. We were all kids from small-town Alaska and we’d sit around in our pyjamas and talk late into the night about boys, make-up, the usual stuff.

‘Sarah had a lovely personality. She was second runner-up in the main pageant but she easily won the Miss Congeniality title, a vote taken among the girls over who is the nicest to be around.

‘Back then Sarah’s ambition was to be a TV presenter, and she wanted to study journalism. She had a boyfriend, which seemed very grown-up. I thought she was very sophisticated. She was an expert at applying make-up, as we’d plaster it on with a trowel.'

Palin’s red swimsuit actually had nothing to do with Baywatch – which didn’t begin until five years after the pageant.

Mrs Massey, now a travel agent living in Seattle, said: ‘I guess Sarah was ahead of her time even then.’

Palin played the flute during the talent round. Massey said: ‘The programme says she performed a piece called The Homecoming. I don’t remember it particularly well. I played Yakety Sax [best known as Benny Hill’s theme tune] on the saxophone.

‘There was also an evening gown round and an interview. Sarah was poised during the interview. She’s more polished now, but she always had poise and confidence.'

'Polished': Palin on Friday

‘A couple of girls were bitchy but Sarah seemed down-to-earth.

'At the end of the five-day contest she wrote on my programme, “Pam, you’re a great, talented girl! I’m so glad we met this week. God bless, Sarah.”

'We promised to stay in touch, but never did.’

Palin’s nomination as John McCain’s running mate has put intense focus on her past and her family, and last week America’s National Enquirer tabloid repeated claims she was ‘in love’ with her husband’s business partner Brad Hanson during a rocky patch in their 20-year marriage.

Palin’s beauty pageant past has also made her the butt of internet jokers, and there have been widely-distributed fake photos of her in a bikini.

Popular vote: Sarah circled, was voted Miss Congeniality by her peers

But Mrs Massey says: ‘The real pictures of Sarah in her red swimsuit at 20 are charming. She’s gone from a little wooden stage in Alaska to the world’s stage. My feeling is, “Good for her!”’