What with Miss South Carolina trying to answer a question about "US Americans" lack of geographic knowledge, and Miss "I forgot I posed naked" California's getting all "gays are ungodly" in our face, I've done a fair share of beauty-pageant-winner bashing on this blog.

So I'm more than happy to read (and report) this:

After winning the Miss Georgia title Saturday night at the RiverCenter’s Bill Heard Theatre, Miss Capital City Kristina Higgins told pageant officials Sunday morning she wanted to relinquish the crown.

“She just didn’t think that she could fulfill the duties,” said Billy Kendall, secretary for the Miss Georgia Board of Trustees.

Why not?  Why couldn't Ms. Higgins be Miss Georgia?  A lucrative career on the conservative lecture circuit (like Miss California)?  Some sex scandal?

Nope.

In a statement, 24-year-old Higgins suggested her duties as a middle school teacher could interfere with the time commitment that comes with being Miss Georgia.

“Due to my current job responsibilities as a middle school teacher and the responsibilities and time commitment as Miss Georgia, I have decided to not fulfill the duties of Miss Georgia 2009. I am grateful for the opportunity to have been chosen as Miss Georgia and fully support the system and wish Emily Cook the best of luck,” Higgins said in the statement.

She's a schoolteacher and she feels responsible to the kids.

Class act.  They should let her keep the crown anyway, because that kind of commitment embodies the ideals of the ultimate woman, which — if I'm not mistaken — is supposedly what beauty pageants are about these days.