50 Years After the Miss America Protests, the Pageant's Obsession with "Pure Women" Continues
In a convention hall in Atlantic City, Debra Barnes Snodgrass began her farewell speech. It was September of 1968, and the 41st Miss America was to crown a new queen. Outside, protests raged. Hundreds of women from around the country assembled on the boardwalk to protest the misogyny, homophobia, fatphobia, and racism of the Miss America Organization, as well as the organization’s promotion of what they called “the degrading mindless-boob-girlie-symbol.”
Women picketed, passed out pamphlets, and tossed bras, girdles, makeup, and magazines into “freedom trash cans” to challenge societal standards of womanhood and beauty. Some even held live skits—one in particular featuring the crowning of a live sheep—to compare pageant contestants to livestock in competitions at county fairs. The protests culminated with an in-house demonstration, interrupting Snodgrass’ farewell speech with repeated shouts of “women’s liberation!”
One of the protest’s organizers, Carol Hanisch, later lamented that their approach seemed anti-woman. “Miss America and all beautiful women came off as our enemy instead of our sisters who suffer with us,” she stated. “We wanted Miss America to come and join us,” another organizer, Alix Kates Shulman, said.
Fifty years later, Miss America finally has joined them. She and her predecessors have come forward calling for change to the nearly century-old pageant, and the protests have moved from outside on the Atlantic City boardwalk to inside the Miss America Organization itself.
In June, Gretchen Carlson announced Miss America 2.0. Carlson, Miss America 1989, became the chairwoman of the organization following the resignation of the former CEO Sam Haskell over leaked emails that slut-shamed and fat-shamed former pageant winners. In the refreshed version of the competition, both the evening gown and swimsuit portions would be replaced with a “live-interactive session with the judges.” These changes were designed to exemplify that Miss America is about more than beauty. Most importantly, these changes were supposed to make Miss America 2.0, what the OG Miss America, in my opinion, never was: inclusive.
However, Miss America has a fatal flaw: the pageant was never designed to be inclusive, nor empowering. The event masquerades as a vehicle for women’s empowerment, but when it is stripped down to its bare bones, there lies an insidious infrastructure that is far from feminist.
One of the protest’s organizers, Carol Hanisch, later lamented that their approach seemed anti-woman. “Miss America and all beautiful women came off as our enemy instead of our sisters who suffer with us,” she stated. “We wanted Miss America to come and join us,” another organizer, Alix Kates Shulman, said.
Fifty years later, Miss America finally has joined them. She and her predecessors have come forward calling for change to the nearly century-old pageant, and the protests have moved from outside on the Atlantic City boardwalk to inside the Miss America Organization itself.
In June, Gretchen Carlson announced Miss America 2.0. Carlson, Miss America 1989, became the chairwoman of the organization following the resignation of the former CEO Sam Haskell over leaked emails that slut-shamed and fat-shamed former pageant winners. In the refreshed version of the competition, both the evening gown and swimsuit portions would be replaced with a “live-interactive session with the judges.” These changes were designed to exemplify that Miss America is about more than beauty. Most importantly, these changes were supposed to make Miss America 2.0, what the OG Miss America, in my opinion, never was: inclusive.
However, Miss America has a fatal flaw: the pageant was never designed to be inclusive, nor empowering. The event masquerades as a vehicle for women’s empowerment, but when it is stripped down to its bare bones, there lies an insidious infrastructure that is far from feminist.
To be eligible, you must be unmarried, have never been pregnant, and “born female.” Until 1940, you also had to be white—a rule some would stay is still an invisible asterisk.
The pageant began as a “bathing beauty competition” in 1921. Its purpose? To sell products, using the very women in the competition. In 1936, when the talent portion was added, the pageant began to take a new direction. “The cornerstone of the pageant has always been the ideal of virtue, being a role model for little girls,” posits Alicia Rodriguez Battistoni. Well, whom does the Miss America Organization consider virtuous? To be eligible, you must be unmarried, have never been pregnant, and “born female.” Until 1940, you also had to be white—a rule some would stay is still an invisible asterisk.
Additionally, as The New York Times points out, the 2017 Judges’ Manual lists the qualities and attributes of titleholders, the first being: “beautiful.”
The winners corroborate what is spelled out in the eligibility and judges’ manual. Over the pageant’s history, the majority of the Miss America queens have been cis, straight, thin, able-bodied, and white—illustrating exactly which women the organization views as virtuous, beautiful, and deserving of their crown. Those who are different are pushed to the margins.
In the words of Audre Lorde, “[t]hose of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference—those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older—know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths.”
Miss America has not yet learned to teach contestants to embrace their differences, rather than to compete for the qualities on the judges’ rubrics.
Lorde continues, “For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support.”
The pageant cannot create change within the narrow confines that were set by men in 1921. As Margot Mifflin puts, “No amount of tweaking over the decades, from adding scholarships to mandating philanthropy, could obscure its bottom line: Regardless of how smart or talented a woman is, she’s a loser without the one thing she can’t control or achieve: beauty.”
To truly change, the competition will have to set itself on fire, and build something new from the ashes.
Additionally, as The New York Times points out, the 2017 Judges’ Manual lists the qualities and attributes of titleholders, the first being: “beautiful.”
The winners corroborate what is spelled out in the eligibility and judges’ manual. Over the pageant’s history, the majority of the Miss America queens have been cis, straight, thin, able-bodied, and white—illustrating exactly which women the organization views as virtuous, beautiful, and deserving of their crown. Those who are different are pushed to the margins.
In the words of Audre Lorde, “[t]hose of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference—those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older—know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths.”
Miss America has not yet learned to teach contestants to embrace their differences, rather than to compete for the qualities on the judges’ rubrics.
Lorde continues, “For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support.”
The pageant cannot create change within the narrow confines that were set by men in 1921. As Margot Mifflin puts, “No amount of tweaking over the decades, from adding scholarships to mandating philanthropy, could obscure its bottom line: Regardless of how smart or talented a woman is, she’s a loser without the one thing she can’t control or achieve: beauty.”
To truly change, the competition will have to set itself on fire, and build something new from the ashes.
Birth Control Is Healthcare, and Healthcare Is a Human Right
The Trump administration released regulations allowing any employer to deny birth control coverage
