E-Mail This Article to a Friend Queen for a year (continued)

So far, Susie Castillo’s life has been a Cinderella story. Her mother came to Methuen from Puerto Rico at the age of 19. She found work as a housekeeper, gave birth to three daughters, and then divorced her Dominican husband when Castillo was six. Castillo’s grandmother raised the girls while her mother supported the family.

"My grandmother spoke Spanish to us all the time," Castillo remembers. "She is very religious, so I had to read the Bible to her every night. I hated doing it. But thank God I did, because I learned about my faith and I learned to read Spanish. I’d get stuck on words and she’d spit it out for me."

Naturally, money was tight. "At Christmas, we got one thing," she says. "For Easter, my friends would be like, ‘Look what I got! I got this new watch.’ And I’d be like, ‘You got a watch? We don’t even get an Easter basket.’ "

But Castillo had big dreams. "As a kid, I was very ambitious," she says. "I wanted to be Cindy Crawford when I was a kid. I wanted to be a high-fashion model. I was flipping through magazines and stuff, and I loved pictures. I’d say to my mom, ‘Why can’t I be this girl here? How can I get in this picture? How can I do this?’ And I had no idea that this modeling world existed. But I’ve always wanted to do it. My mom was always like, ‘Well, you can do it. Let’s figure out how to do it.’ " Although she admits her mother isn’t very ambitious, Castillo says her support helped her succeed. "And I grew up just thinking this way, that nothing was impossible. It didn’t matter how big it was or how much family or friends were like, ‘Oh, you want to do that? That’s really hard to do.’ I was like, ‘I don’t care, I’ll do it. So many people are doing it, why can’t I be one of them?’ "

When Castillo was a teenager, a family friend suggested she find an agent in Boston, so she started calling around. An agency accepted her, and she started modeling. "You don’t need money for modeling. A lot of people think you have to go to modeling school, but modeling school isn’t going to make you. You either have it or you don’t."

Apparently, Castillo had it. She won the Miss Teen Massachusetts title. She kept modeling. When she was a senior in high school, Castillo decided she wanted to be an actress. "I did one of those open calls at Elite [Model Management]; they actually rejected me. They said, ‘We like the skinny tall girls.’ " Castillo is 5’8" — short in the modeling world. "They didn’t reject me altogether: they recommended that I try acting. They said, ‘We can see you more as an actress, we can see you more on television, more so than on the runways of Paris and Milan.’ And so I took that advice." But Castillo was disappointed. "I was crushed because modeling was what I wanted to do. But I thought, actors make more money anyway."

Determined, confident, bubbly, sweetly pretty, and Spanish-speaking — in pageant land, right now is a good time to be Latina, since both Miss America and Miss USA have recently celebrated diversity by choosing winners from ethnic minorities — Castillo seemed predestined to be Miss USA. And she was persistent. "I remember a friend in college, when I wanted to be an actress, they were like, ‘It’s really difficult, you’re going to be one of hundreds of girls.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I’m going to go to the Miss USA pageant and I’m going to win it.’ " And, of course, she did. "Now I need to get to LA and go on auditions and continue studying acting."

Castillo’s dream job is to star in a sit-com. "When I’m home with my family, I’m just the biggest dork," she says. "Which is why I think I’m so attracted to sit-coms, people being silly, making people laugh."

Please don’t ask Susie Castillo about her "talent" — she didn’t tap-dance or twirl a baton or belt out an aria to become Miss USA. Unlike the Miss America Organization, the Miss Universe Organization doesn’t care if contestants have a knack for operatic singing.

But if Castillo had to display a talent, hers would be juggling. "I can juggle anything," she says proudly. "Fruit, anything. I’ve been playing volleyball forever, and during practice my coach would be like, ‘Susie, stop it!’ Because I’d be juggling balls."

The Miss USA pageant evaluates its 51 contestants in three categories: personal interview, swimsuit competition, and evening-gown attire. Which makes the winner unable to deny that she’s semi-famous for any reason other than that she’s hot. But Castillo will try. "It’s not a beauty pageant," she insists. "A lot of people mistake it for a beauty pageant. It used to be. It’s not anymore. The prettiest girl doesn’t always win."

Castillo thinks it was her brain that impressed the judges. "You’re going to be a spokesperson for a whole year. You’re going to give speeches. You’re going to talk to people — to adults — so a huge part of it has to do with your brain. And your intelligence, how smart you are. If you’re gorgeous but open your mouth and can’t say anything intelligent, you’re not gonna win the pageant." What about Miss USA’s reputation for being, well, slutty? "Slutty?" Castillo says curiously, pretending she’s never heard that one before. "It’s not slutty, it’s sexy."

Castillo walked that fine line for the cover of Drill magazine, a new bimonthly glossy aiming to be a Maxim for the military. In a seven-page Q&A spread for the magazine’s second issue, Castillo posed in a bikini and sailor hat for one photo, provocatively tugging at her bikini bottoms. In another, her bust nearly explodes from her button-down shirt.

"Did you see that?" she says softly. "It was fun. I’d never taken pictures in the 10 years that I had been modeling, pictures like that — Maxim, FHM type of stuff. So it was different, it was fun, and it was for the troops. Anything for my boys and girls. I’m doing it more for the boys."

And actually, Castillo thinks the spread wasn’t as revealing as it could have been. "I wanted it to be tasteful. It was sexy, but it was tasteful. Not like FHM, when you see girls with their legs spread open or up on all fours."

Still, isn’t she helping to objectify women by posing that way, even though she’s keeping a lot of soldiers, ah, happy? "People have the freedom to express themselves in different ways," she says. "And as a woman, as Miss USA, I think it’s great when someone has a brain, when they feel comfortable in their own skin to be able to do that." She sighs. "It’s art."

one last thing. Don’t give Miss USA a hard time about world peace. You’ll get an earful.

"People are like, ‘Why do you say world peace? What is that all about?’ " she says, ripping into those who mock the standard beauty-pageant-contestant wish. "So I say, ‘Do you even watch the pageant? Watch the pageant, and then we can speak about this.’ If you’re gonna say something [critical], say something intelligent, know what you’re saying. They’re trying to make me look stupid by doing the whole ‘world peace’ thing. It makes them look so stupid. You know what I always say when that comes up? I’m like, ‘What’s wrong with world peace anyway? Are you against it?’ There’s nothing wrong with it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I say, ‘God bless the girl who answers ‘world peace.’

"They think I’m stupid and the girls are stupid for saying anything about peace in the world," Castillo adds. "But what is wrong with it? How many people are dying because of war? I just got back from Germany. We took a tour of Berlin, and everything that happened and went on there during World War II, and with Hitler and the Holocaust and all that stuff. So many people died — what’s wrong with world peace? There’s nothing wrong with it. Say it every year, girls!"

Camille Dodero can be reached at cdodero[a]phx.com