Des Moines beauty queen banished from `Big Brother'

This was one pageant Seattle-area beauty queen Jamie Kern didn't win.

Kern, the image-obsessed 23-year-old Miss Washington USA from Des Moines, was the final contestant to be "banished" from TV's "Big Brother" household last night. Characterizing Kern's stay in the camera-riddled house as relatively uninvolved, the show's official Web site said of her, "She stayed completely focused on one thing and one thing only: her image."

Kern lost a phone-in viewer poll to three male finalists known on the show only by their first names: Curtis, Eddie and Josh.

Kern is the last of the 10 original house guests to be excised with no prize money.

One will leave during tomorrow night's finale with the $500,000 grand prize. That choice, too, will be made by a phone poll.

Kern's instincts as a beauty-pageant contestant apparently kicked in when the news was announced last night on live TV. She registered no emotion as she congratulated the other three.

CBS' "Big Brother" is one of a spate of recent "reality shows" in which a group of average people is gradually pared down to one big cash winner. "Big Brother's" contestants live in a house completely wired with video cameras, allowing no privacy and no interaction with the outside, save for occasional banners flown by pranksters overhead.

Kern's family flew to Los Angeles to be at the "Big Brother" set when the banishment results were announced on live television.

"We're going to give her a big hug," her stepfather, Dennis Kern, said before departing.

She was just being herself on the show, said her mother, Nina Kern.

"She's not trying to put on any kind of an act or anything like that. She's a thinker. She thinks before she speaks most of the time. . . . Some people have said she's too quiet, but that's the way she is."

Nina Kern said she doesn't know what her daughter's post-show plans are. An acceptance to Yale University for an MBA program has expired, but not one to Columbia. And she will promote her Miss Washington USA title, her mother said.

But pageant official David Nold fumed, "Jamie has had less involvement as Miss Washington USA than any titlist I've ever known. Jamie focuses on promoting only Jamie, not Washington, not the pageant, only Jamie."

Nold is vice president and general legal counsel for Northwest Pageants, which runs the Miss Washington and Miss Oregon USA pageants. Angered when Kern's talent representatives issued a statement last week claiming she represented the state well on the CBS show, Nold said, "She hasn't done anything to represent Washington state."

Dennis Kern responded that the family had had a "very, very uncomfortable association" with the pageant, and claimed that it was, in fact, Nold who wouldn't return his stepdaughter's calls.

Nina Kern called "Big Brother" a once-in-a-lifetime chance for her daughter. But hearing the assorted slams on her - including less-than-flattering remarks from the show's analyst, Dr. Drew Pinsky - was never easy.

"Some of the banners that have been flying over the house - some of them are just mean. There are some mean people out there," Nina Kern said. After seeing one banner that accused her daughter of being two-faced, the family paid for a banner with a supportive message on it to be flown above the house.

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.