She's picture perfect - and barefoot

There she is, Mrs. Washington America.

At first glance, she's everything you would expect her to be. She lives on a cul-de-sac in a picture-perfect neighborhood in Bothell. Her cream carpet matches her living-room furniture, which matches the walls. She has papier-mache fruit in a bowl on her dining-room table. She subscribes to Martha Stewart Living.

Annette Bening's model of a suburban housewife in "American Beauty" comes to mind. ("See how her gardening gloves match the handle of her pruning shears? That's not an accident.").

But as the movie's tagline suggests: Look closer.

Or look down. Mrs. Washington America 2000 is barefoot. Never mind that she's wearing a cool blue sundress, a full face of make-up and a diamond-and-ruby bracelet - one of the prizes she won in the pageant - on her arm.

Behind the camera-ready smile and hair curled just so, Helen Bacon, 36, is down-to-earth, and she has the bare toes to prove it. Sure, there's a fair amount of kitsch in being crowned a beauty queen. She has the Mrs. Washington America 2000 license-plate frames, and the monogrammed luggage, and the glittery crown, all of it, all of it.

But the prizes, while not particularly lavish, are just the frosting on the cake, the jewel in her tiara. The real prize in all of this glitzy glory is the opportunity to make a difference, to make her mark as a celebrity for a year.

"It's OK to have fun with it, but there's also a serious side to it," Bacon says. "If I can take the attention from the crown and put it toward my cause, which is breast-cancer awareness, then I've accomplished something great."

It's not like it used to be, when contestants would compete in ironing and cooking contests to determine who could best fold clothes and put them in a drawer, that sort of thing.

Today's Mrs. America is well-rounded, active in her community, poised, intelligent and physically fit. She's "the contemporary married woman," according to the pageant's Web site. The pageant began in 1938.

She exemplifies the 21st-century woman, says Pam Curnel, state pageant director. "You have women like Helen, who is bilingual, so she can touch a lot more people with that."

Bacon, a former flight attendant who is now a stay-at-home mom to 11-month-old Luke, was born in Madrid and is fluent in Spanish. She says her best friend, Beth Kovacevich, encouraged her to enter the pageant.

"She's the type of person who should be Mrs. Washington America because she's so honest and genuine and approachable," says Kovacevich, a former Mrs. Washington America.

The state competition was fierce in quality, Kovacevich says, if not in quantity. At the June 17 pageant in Moses Lake, there were 10 Washington women vying for the title. They were judged on interviews, a swimsuit competition and an evening-gown competition. Other states have higher participation, according to Curnel.

"It's taken Washington state a little longer to catch on," she says. "With the Mrs. America pageant nationwide, it's been more consistent."

Whether there are 10 people onstage or 100, Bacon says, it doesn't make standing up there in a bathing suit any easier. But she viewed it as a personal challenge.

"It was something I wanted to do to stretch myself," Bacon says. "It gets you out of that comfort zone."

She remembers her interview question: If you could make a difference in someone's life, who would it be and why?

She doesn't remember what she said, only that everything shifted into slow motion and the emcee sounded like one of the parents in those Peanuts cartoons, all distorted and unintelligible.

"I was very, very nervous," she says.

She doesn't wear her crown around the house, but the night she won, she slept with it beside her bed.

In September, Bacon will compete with winners from 50 states and the District of Columbia for the Mrs. America title in Hawaii. The pageant will air on PAX television Sept. 9 and 10.