There is, however, some cause for optimism, says Joe Kelly, 52, president of Dads & Daughters, a nonprofit group promoting better lives for girls. Positive women role models for teens are "more visible than before," he said.

Oprah Winfrey, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., new Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, astronauts Sally Ride and Mae Jemison, basketball player Sheryl Swoopes — these women are a few examples that Kelly and other advocates are promoting as antidotes to bad-girl images.

"Certainly I think it's an increasing need," said Ashley Carr of the American Association of University Women, which is promoting the educational and professional achievements of historic female figures such as the group's founding mothers, Marion Talbot and Ellen Richards, during Women's History Month this March.

At the University of Memphis, Leigh Anne Duck, an associate English professor and interim director of women's studies program, said she found hope in her students, though in "five out of five classes" they all have talked about Spears shaving her head.

"I'm not even sure what wave of feminism is heading where now, but it's pretty clear that there is a generation shift, a very kind of positive — not an internecine struggle — but a kind of positive energy building up," said Duck, a University of Chicago doctoral graduate in 2000. "They're not worried about how wide their (bra) straps should be."

Rammell is using the Miss USA pageant to urge teens to look within their families or communities for positive models. Some critics denounce the Miss USA and Miss America pageants as superficial, but many young girls and adults regard them as paradigms of womanhood that emphasize poise, speaking and achievement — some of the hallmarks of public leadership.

Saying she is familiar with Miss America's scholarship program, Carr added: "Yes, it is a beauty pageant, but even the fact that they have a long history in providing these scholarships doesn't surface."

Rammell said her grandmother's endurance working a farm and her mother's lessons of compassion were a good influence on her.

"The most beautiful women I know are my mom and my grandma because of the lives they led," she said. "Every wrinkle on their face tells a story. It's like a poem."

Rammell, who was raised on a ranch near Yellowstone National Park, is one of three children of a veterinarian father and homemaker mother in Rexburg, Idaho. She's now a biology major at BYU-Idaho, seeking to be a physician's assistant, and plans to be a role model by being socially and politically active.