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Looking for Miss America: A Pageant's 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood
From an author praised for writing “delicious social history” (Dwight Garner, The New York Times) comes a lively account of memorable Miss America contestants, protests, and scandals―and how the pageant, nearing its one hundredth anniversary, serves as an unintended indicator of feminist progress
Looking for Miss America is a fast-paced narrative history of a curious and contradictory institution. From its start in 1921 as an Atlantic City tourist draw to its current incarnation as a scholarship competition, the pageant has indexed women’s status during periods of social change―the post-suffrage 1920s, the Eisenhower 1950s, the #MeToo era. This ever-changing institution has been shaped by war, evangelism, the rise of television and reality TV, and, significantly, by contestants who confounded expectations.
Spotlighting individuals, from Yolande Betbeze, whose refusal to pose in swimsuits led an angry sponsor to launch the rival Miss USA contest, to the first black winner, Vanessa Williams, who received death threats and was protected by sharpshooters in her hometown parade, Margot Mifflin shows how women made hard bargains even as they used the pageant for economic advancement. The pageant’s history includes, crucially, those it excluded; the notorious Rule Seven, which required contestants to be “of the white race,” was retired in the 1950s, but no women of color were crowned until the 1980s.
In rigorously researched, vibrant chapters that unpack each decade of the pageant, Looking for Miss America examines the heady blend of capitalism, patriotism, class anxiety, and cultural mythology that has fueled this American ritual.
Looking for Miss America is a fast-paced narrative history of a curious and contradictory institution. From its start in 1921 as an Atlantic City tourist draw to its current incarnation as a scholarship competition, the pageant has indexed women’s status during periods of social change―the post-suffrage 1920s, the Eisenhower 1950s, the #MeToo era. This ever-changing institution has been shaped by war, evangelism, the rise of television and reality TV, and, significantly, by contestants who confounded expectations.
Spotlighting individuals, from Yolande Betbeze, whose refusal to pose in swimsuits led an angry sponsor to launch the rival Miss USA contest, to the first black winner, Vanessa Williams, who received death threats and was protected by sharpshooters in her hometown parade, Margot Mifflin shows how women made hard bargains even as they used the pageant for economic advancement. The pageant’s history includes, crucially, those it excluded; the notorious Rule Seven, which required contestants to be “of the white race,” was retired in the 1950s, but no women of color were crowned until the 1980s.
In rigorously researched, vibrant chapters that unpack each decade of the pageant, Looking for Miss America examines the heady blend of capitalism, patriotism, class anxiety, and cultural mythology that has fueled this American ritual.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published August 4, 2020
64 people are currently reading
2485 people want to read
About the author
Margot Mifflin
5 books85 followersIf you'd like to have a chat with me, you'll find me now on Skolay: skolay.com/writers/margot-mifflin
Margot Mifflin is an author praised for writing "delicious social history (Dwight Garner, The New York Times). She wrote the first history of women's tattoo culture, Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, and The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman, a finalist for a Caroline Bancroft History Award.
Her 2020 book Looking for Miss America, the first cultural history of the Miss America pageant, is a Cosmopolitan Best Nonfiction Book of 2020, a New York Post Best Book of 2020, a Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book, a National Book Review 5 Hot Books Pick, and a PureWow 12 Best Nonfiction Books of 2020. It was awarded the 2021 Pop Culture Association's Emily Toth Best Book in Woman's Studies award.
“A spellbinding…first-rate analysis of the United States’s most distinctive beauty contest.” —The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Mifflin’s lively book reads as an obituary…She’s cleareyed about the pageant’s many hypocrisies and failures…But Mifflin, too, is invested in the pageant’s sense of specialness.” —The New York Times
“Mifflin is as alive to the pageant’s historical grotesqueries as she is to the weirdo details of its founding.” —The New Yorker
“This incisive and entertaining history deserves the spotlight.” —Publishers Weekly
“Nothing short of fascinating.” —Cosmopolitan
Margot Mifflin is an author praised for writing "delicious social history (Dwight Garner, The New York Times). She wrote the first history of women's tattoo culture, Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, and The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman, a finalist for a Caroline Bancroft History Award.
Her 2020 book Looking for Miss America, the first cultural history of the Miss America pageant, is a Cosmopolitan Best Nonfiction Book of 2020, a New York Post Best Book of 2020, a Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book, a National Book Review 5 Hot Books Pick, and a PureWow 12 Best Nonfiction Books of 2020. It was awarded the 2021 Pop Culture Association's Emily Toth Best Book in Woman's Studies award.
“A spellbinding…first-rate analysis of the United States’s most distinctive beauty contest.” —The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Mifflin’s lively book reads as an obituary…She’s cleareyed about the pageant’s many hypocrisies and failures…But Mifflin, too, is invested in the pageant’s sense of specialness.” —The New York Times
“Mifflin is as alive to the pageant’s historical grotesqueries as she is to the weirdo details of its founding.” —The New Yorker
“This incisive and entertaining history deserves the spotlight.” —Publishers Weekly
“Nothing short of fascinating.” —Cosmopolitan
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April 6, 2020
My dad was an industrial arts teacher when I was growing up. Before my sister and I were allowed to take driver ed, we were required to change the oil, spark plugs and tires on our beat up 1968 VW Beetle.. Looking back, I realize my dad was the first true feminist I ever knew.
As a family, we'd absolutely watch the Miss America pageant each year, but we treated it more like a sporting event than anything else. We'd choose teams of contestants, and cheer wildly when one of our picks did well. It was a much-anticipated event, yet to this day, I can't conjure a single image of a contestant in a swims suit or recall internalizing any comparisons between them and me.
Which gets me to Looking for Miss America by Margot Mifflin, a well-written and accessible non-fiction look at the history of Miss America through personal, social, economic, racial and feminist lenses. It is brilliant. Brilliantly written and scoped and voiced. The author is careful to temper the often-heard angry scree of activism surrounding the pageant with more lighthearted and intimate glimpses of it through insight from former participants - both winners and losers. The result is the best possible outcome for any non-fiction book - it lays out the story without overtly pushing a hard agenda, and lets the reader shuffle the information and take what the can out of it.
It's clear from the get-go Margot Mifflin is a skilled wordsmith. She flows seamlessly from interviews and first person accounts to more research-based information, layering in important historical and social context, all while creating a truly engaging story.
I'm not a fangirl of pageants. They rarely even enter my consciousness, but Looking for Miss America sincerely and gently got me thinking about the deeper historical meaning of beauty - what it is, how it is determined and by whom, how it changes and why, and why it matters - if it actually does. Plus, the history of the pageant itself is a delightful look at changing times and norms.
Looking for Miss America was a surprisingly thought-provoking read, and one that will stay with me.
If you're looking for a diatribe about all this evil about beauty pageants and specifically Miss America, you will be disappointed in Looking for Miss America by Margot Mifflin. If, on the other hand, you're looking for a well-written, well-balanced and well-grounded look at Miss America as a cultural marker, then you - like me - will greatly enjoy this book.
This review is based on an advanced copy reading.
As a family, we'd absolutely watch the Miss America pageant each year, but we treated it more like a sporting event than anything else. We'd choose teams of contestants, and cheer wildly when one of our picks did well. It was a much-anticipated event, yet to this day, I can't conjure a single image of a contestant in a swims suit or recall internalizing any comparisons between them and me.
Which gets me to Looking for Miss America by Margot Mifflin, a well-written and accessible non-fiction look at the history of Miss America through personal, social, economic, racial and feminist lenses. It is brilliant. Brilliantly written and scoped and voiced. The author is careful to temper the often-heard angry scree of activism surrounding the pageant with more lighthearted and intimate glimpses of it through insight from former participants - both winners and losers. The result is the best possible outcome for any non-fiction book - it lays out the story without overtly pushing a hard agenda, and lets the reader shuffle the information and take what the can out of it.
It's clear from the get-go Margot Mifflin is a skilled wordsmith. She flows seamlessly from interviews and first person accounts to more research-based information, layering in important historical and social context, all while creating a truly engaging story.
I'm not a fangirl of pageants. They rarely even enter my consciousness, but Looking for Miss America sincerely and gently got me thinking about the deeper historical meaning of beauty - what it is, how it is determined and by whom, how it changes and why, and why it matters - if it actually does. Plus, the history of the pageant itself is a delightful look at changing times and norms.
Looking for Miss America was a surprisingly thought-provoking read, and one that will stay with me.
If you're looking for a diatribe about all this evil about beauty pageants and specifically Miss America, you will be disappointed in Looking for Miss America by Margot Mifflin. If, on the other hand, you're looking for a well-written, well-balanced and well-grounded look at Miss America as a cultural marker, then you - like me - will greatly enjoy this book.
This review is based on an advanced copy reading.
January 14, 2021
Looking for Miss America is the sort of cultural history you’ll devour in great gulps. It’s full of juicy historical details, unforgettable characters like Yolande Betbeze (Miss America 1951, always quick off the mark with a zippy quip like her wisecrack that Miss America is “the kind of girl who enters a bar and orders an orange juice ‘just loud enough for everyone to hear her’”) and Margaret Gorman, the first Miss America, who was just 15 years old when she was crowned in 1921: “When two Herald reporters set out in the sweltering summer heat to interview her,” writes Mifflin, they found her “on her knees in a playground, shooting marbles in the dirt.”
But Looking for Miss America isn’t just a breezy read. Mifflin digs deep into the cultural, racial, and gender politics of the pageant that for generations defined American femininity, exposing its often hapless attempts to split the difference between Betty Friedan and Betty Crocker, feminism and happy homemaker-ism. Mifflin doesn’t flinch from a hard-eyed look at the pageant’s origins in the eugenics era and its role in celebrating white women as the embodiment of American womanhood (a role that twins Miss America with Barbie). Her accounts of trailblazing Native American contestants, and of course the first Black Miss America, Vanessa Williams, and the one and only Jewish Miss America, Bess Myerson (who was earnestly beseeched by Jews rooting for her, “You have to win to show the world that we are not ugly”), are engrossing—and touching.
As a feminist cultural critic, Mifflin has no illusions about the pageant’s role in policing the boundaries of femininity. But the storyteller in her can’t resist dishy gossip, anthropological “thick descriptions” of pageant culture, and the often bizarre culture clash between the time-warped, Stepford Woman ideal with her mascara-streaked cryface and the America around her. All in all, a lively, engrossing read. Pairs well with M.G. Lord’s Forever Barbie.
But Looking for Miss America isn’t just a breezy read. Mifflin digs deep into the cultural, racial, and gender politics of the pageant that for generations defined American femininity, exposing its often hapless attempts to split the difference between Betty Friedan and Betty Crocker, feminism and happy homemaker-ism. Mifflin doesn’t flinch from a hard-eyed look at the pageant’s origins in the eugenics era and its role in celebrating white women as the embodiment of American womanhood (a role that twins Miss America with Barbie). Her accounts of trailblazing Native American contestants, and of course the first Black Miss America, Vanessa Williams, and the one and only Jewish Miss America, Bess Myerson (who was earnestly beseeched by Jews rooting for her, “You have to win to show the world that we are not ugly”), are engrossing—and touching.
As a feminist cultural critic, Mifflin has no illusions about the pageant’s role in policing the boundaries of femininity. But the storyteller in her can’t resist dishy gossip, anthropological “thick descriptions” of pageant culture, and the often bizarre culture clash between the time-warped, Stepford Woman ideal with her mascara-streaked cryface and the America around her. All in all, a lively, engrossing read. Pairs well with M.G. Lord’s Forever Barbie.
September 15, 2020
From an author praised for writing “delicious social history,” Looking for Miss America is a lively account of memorable Miss America contestants, protests, and scandals–and how the pageant serves as an unintended indicator of feminist progress. In rigorously researched, vibrant chapters that unpack each decade of the pageant, it examines the heady blend of capitalism, patriotism, class anxiety, and cultural mythology that has fueled this American ritual.
September 4, 2024
Extremely well-documented, fast-paced and super interesting, this is exactly the kind of non-fiction I appreciate. I've learnt so much about a topic I didn't even know I was interested in.
August 22, 2020
Something you may not know about me: two of my favorite movies are Miss Congeniality and Drop Dead Gorgeous, two films that poke fun of pageantry. So when I saw this book up on NetGalley, I jumped at the chance to read more about the pageant that inspired it all.
As we approach the centennial of the Miss America pageant, Looking for Miss America is a fascinating and eminently readable decade-by-decade history of the titular pageant, its organizers, its notable winners, and its entanglements with historical movements, most notably feminism. Mifflin expertly synthesizes interviews and research throughout the decades to craft an image of a pageant constantly in flux about its own image: is it a bathing beauties showcase? a scholarship vehicle? a swimsuit-centric objectification invitation? a place for beautiful women to showcase their talents and platforms?
For me, the most compelling parts of this book were when Mifflin discussed the intersections of emergent feminist movements with the Miss America pageant and how many of the "progressive" changes to the pageant (excuse me: competition) came from the women competing. She also nicely captures the tensions of the pageant itself: it obviously prizes beauty but awards scholarships; it requires women to be unmarried and childless Madonnas but (until recently) judged their bodies in an objectifying bikini contest; it claims to empower women but implicitly and explicitly discriminated (and discriminates) against women of color.
Overall, a compelling and well-researched read!
As we approach the centennial of the Miss America pageant, Looking for Miss America is a fascinating and eminently readable decade-by-decade history of the titular pageant, its organizers, its notable winners, and its entanglements with historical movements, most notably feminism. Mifflin expertly synthesizes interviews and research throughout the decades to craft an image of a pageant constantly in flux about its own image: is it a bathing beauties showcase? a scholarship vehicle? a swimsuit-centric objectification invitation? a place for beautiful women to showcase their talents and platforms?
For me, the most compelling parts of this book were when Mifflin discussed the intersections of emergent feminist movements with the Miss America pageant and how many of the "progressive" changes to the pageant (excuse me: competition) came from the women competing. She also nicely captures the tensions of the pageant itself: it obviously prizes beauty but awards scholarships; it requires women to be unmarried and childless Madonnas but (until recently) judged their bodies in an objectifying bikini contest; it claims to empower women but implicitly and explicitly discriminated (and discriminates) against women of color.
Overall, a compelling and well-researched read!
September 24, 2020
I loved it. Couldn't put it down loved it. It was a great historical, social and feminist look at a beauty pageant and thus, the changing mores for women in the US. Well written with many primary sources and laugh out loud moments. If you grew up watching Miss America (ok, I even had a Barbie Miss America), then you will probably enjoy this book as much as I did. PLUS it gives Vanessa Williams her due. Gotta love that!
October 19, 2022
deeply examines this weird American paradox
Exploitative? Empowering? Feminist? Male gaze? Beauty contest? Scholarship program? Swimsuit contest? Atlantic City tourism event? Emblem of American femininity? What is even the Miss America pageant. Well, Mifflin examines all of these angles in depth and humor. She doesn’t necessarily provide answers, but it’s an interesting journey to take with her.
Exploitative? Empowering? Feminist? Male gaze? Beauty contest? Scholarship program? Swimsuit contest? Atlantic City tourism event? Emblem of American femininity? What is even the Miss America pageant. Well, Mifflin examines all of these angles in depth and humor. She doesn’t necessarily provide answers, but it’s an interesting journey to take with her.
April 23, 2021
Really interesting! I liked all the quotes and perspective from former winners and contestants going back decades.
May 2, 2020
(I received an ARC of this copy in exchange for an honest review.)
I've never had any association with pageants, and I'm not sure that I've ever watched Miss America - maybe I've seen portions of it on TV or YouTube over the years - but it often feels like this ever-present thing in American culture. I was excited to find this book largely because I'm writing a book about women in the American military, and there's a moment of overlap with the Miss America pageant and I wanted to understand the pageant better.
This book did not disappoint. It's a captivating history of the pageant and its evolution over the years, with attention to the ways in which the Miss America pageant has consistently been structured in a way that privileges middle/upper class white women (and for decades, only allowed white women). Following the changes in the pageant from the 1920s through the present was fascinating. I was particularly interested in learning about the pageant in WW2 and the years immediately following, but the entire book was a well-written history of Miss America. Highly recommend.
I've never had any association with pageants, and I'm not sure that I've ever watched Miss America - maybe I've seen portions of it on TV or YouTube over the years - but it often feels like this ever-present thing in American culture. I was excited to find this book largely because I'm writing a book about women in the American military, and there's a moment of overlap with the Miss America pageant and I wanted to understand the pageant better.
This book did not disappoint. It's a captivating history of the pageant and its evolution over the years, with attention to the ways in which the Miss America pageant has consistently been structured in a way that privileges middle/upper class white women (and for decades, only allowed white women). Following the changes in the pageant from the 1920s through the present was fascinating. I was particularly interested in learning about the pageant in WW2 and the years immediately following, but the entire book was a well-written history of Miss America. Highly recommend.
August 9, 2020
Mifflin has done consummate research to deliver a profile of the American institution as it approaches its 100th anniversary.
Her snapshot unfolds chronologically as she supplements history and facts with anecdotes of both former winners and non-winners that provide both insights and acumen.
She succeeds in objectivity while pointing out how the pageant has fared with each generation and what was happening in society and specifically the woman's movement in each era.
A good read.
Her snapshot unfolds chronologically as she supplements history and facts with anecdotes of both former winners and non-winners that provide both insights and acumen.
She succeeds in objectivity while pointing out how the pageant has fared with each generation and what was happening in society and specifically the woman's movement in each era.
A good read.
April 24, 2020
Fascinating and engaging. Each story about a known or little-known woman in the Miss America world delivered gems of realism, thanks to Mifflin's wisdom in including scenery, sensory details, relatable pockets of description. We get so much more than a glimpse at feminism of the day. We get experientials of the day. A new way to appreciate what the pageant was designed to do, evolving into what it is today. This book is everything I hoped it would be.
July 26, 2020
While there are few things in the world today less relevant than the Miss America pageant, Mifflin manages to make this history of the pageant both interesting and engaging.
Thanks to NetGalley for providing an ARC copy for my review.
Thanks to NetGalley for providing an ARC copy for my review.
June 2, 2020
An absorbing social & pop cultural history of the Miss America pageant, ideal vacation reading, that doubles as an overview of 20th century feminist history.
June 7, 2021
My god that was a good book.
March 11, 2021
Chronicling the Miss America Pageant over the last 100 years, I found this book to be informative but not insightful. To me, it was a long list of names with a sprinkling of quotes from primary sources, but the author never got around to developing a strong theme from the facts. There was a vague undercurrent of feminism discussion which would've been interesting, but again the book never quite got there. For instance, regarding the swimsuit issue, did the author see it as a step forward or backwards? Should the pageant- I mean, scholarship program- be abandoned completely or changed to fit modern values? Are we as a society so woke now that pageants are meaningless, and is that good or bad?
This book was written in such a way that it skated along the top of those questions, but it didn't offer any opinions that would've made for a satisfying deep dive into those issues. I did learn a bit about a new topic, though, which is the minimum requirement for a nonfiction book. This will go into the category of "I'm glad I read it, but I wouldn't recommend it to other people".
This book was written in such a way that it skated along the top of those questions, but it didn't offer any opinions that would've made for a satisfying deep dive into those issues. I did learn a bit about a new topic, though, which is the minimum requirement for a nonfiction book. This will go into the category of "I'm glad I read it, but I wouldn't recommend it to other people".
February 8, 2021
Fascinating.
August 24, 2020
Surprisingly woke, funny, and hopeful, while remaining compulsively readable. I can’t recommend this enough.
October 14, 2020
Interesting and intersectional.
January 2, 2021
This was a fascinating read.
At its birth in 1920, what became the Miss America Organization (MAO) was a proto-feminist spectacle with contestants robed and spiked like the Statue of Liberty and wearing sashes taken from the Women’s Suffrage movement.
The swimsuit came from the Annette Kellerman satement monokini. Seeking to fund scholarships and move away from pageantry and into enabling if not empowerment, MAO further emphasized a cattle-call like aspect of the event it took decades to deal with.
In 1950, the Miss America Pageant crowned 21-year-old Mobile native Yolande Betbeze (1929-2016) as "Miss America 1951." She would inadvertently go on to reshape the pageant's format by refusing to wear a swimsuit during her reign. Lauded as a feminist hero, Betbeze forever changed the Miss America pageant and was later an active participant in the civil rights and anti-nuclear movements.
(Miss America is not be confused with the Miss Universe with Miss USA pageant that Trump acquired.)
There is much here about high-profile contestants like Vanessa Williams and Gretchen Carlson as well as lesser-knowns and the impact participating had on their lives.
At its birth in 1920, what became the Miss America Organization (MAO) was a proto-feminist spectacle with contestants robed and spiked like the Statue of Liberty and wearing sashes taken from the Women’s Suffrage movement.
The sashes weren’t particular to Miss America (Southern girls had worn state-specific sashes in monument-dedication ceremonies as early as 1908), but they were highly symbolic at that historic moment: suffragettes, for whom pageantry was a powerful vehicle for activism, had worn them in marches beginning with the historic 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession in Washington. (“Through pageantry,” wrote Hazel MacKaye, the feminist who pioneered the sashes as a tool of the cause, “we women can set forth our ideals and aspirations more graphically than any other way.”) The sashes conveyed solidarity with the National Women’s Party through their colors (purple, white, and gold) and their motto, “Votes for Women.” By contrast, the beauty pageant sashes expressed local affiliation and individual aspiration. This contest was not about women. It was about Woman.
The swimsuit came from the Annette Kellerman satement monokini. Seeking to fund scholarships and move away from pageantry and into enabling if not empowerment, MAO further emphasized a cattle-call like aspect of the event it took decades to deal with.
In 1950, the Miss America Pageant crowned 21-year-old Mobile native Yolande Betbeze (1929-2016) as "Miss America 1951." She would inadvertently go on to reshape the pageant's format by refusing to wear a swimsuit during her reign. Lauded as a feminist hero, Betbeze forever changed the Miss America pageant and was later an active participant in the civil rights and anti-nuclear movements.
Because many of Slaughter’s board members preferred to cultivate movie stars, the scholarship was only grudgingly approved, and to her astonishment, she alone was expected to raise the $5,000 to fund it. She merely flinched, then sat down and hand-wrote letters to 230 companies who sold products a beauty queen might endorse, landing $1,000 contracts with Bancroft & Sons, a textile manufacturer; Fitch Shampoo Company; Harvel Watches; and Catalina Swim Suits, which had been designing swimwear since 1912, inspired initially by Annette Kellerman. With giants Jantzen and Cole, Catalina had been dictating affordable beach fashion for decades. Now its suits would become Miss America’s crowning uniform.
She was an instant media darling with an endless supply of quotable sass. But her most famous comment, dropped like a bomb the morning after her coronation at a breakfast where she was told she would tour the country modeling Catalina swimsuits, was a simple “no” that changed not just the course of Miss America, but the landscape of American beauty pageants, period. “I’m a singer, not a pinup,” she declared.
Conveniently, she had failed to sign the binding contract, so the pageant backed her decision and Catalina was out of luck. Infuriated, they pulled their sponsorship. Months later, when Jacque Mercer was still modeling for them, Catalina president E. B. Stewart griped to her about the Miss America contest, which he felt focused too much on talent and not enough on the Catalina curves. To Slaughter’s enduring dismay, Mercer replied, “Why don’t you start your own pageant?” Thus Miss Universe was born, along with its own feeder pageants, Miss USA and later Miss Teen USA, all of which now run parallel to Miss America, and which Donald Trump owned from 1996 to 2015. In March 1951, Business Week reported that Catalina’s rival contest would focus “strictly on the body.”
To this day, Miss USA and Miss America are conflated in the public mind, though the former has historically been the lowbrow cousin to the latter—more voluptuous, less wholesome, and only belatedly adopting the high-minded girl-power rhetoric that Miss America has been pushing since the 1940s.
(Miss America is not be confused with the Miss Universe with Miss USA pageant that Trump acquired.)
There is much here about high-profile contestants like Vanessa Williams and Gretchen Carlson as well as lesser-knowns and the impact participating had on their lives.
January 7, 2021
Today’s post is in Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood by Margot Mifflin. It is 310 pages long and is published by Counterpoint. The cover is a picture of a historical Miss America. There is very mild foul language, discussion of sex, sexuality, and sexual abuse, and no violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.
From the dust jacket- From an author praised for writing “delicious social history” (Dwight Garner, The New York Times) comes a lively account of memorable Miss America contestants, protests, and scandals―and how the pageant, nearing its one hundredth anniversary, serves as an unintended indicator of feminist progress.
Looking for Miss America is a fast-paced narrative history of a curious and contradictory institution. From its start in 1921 as an Atlantic City tourist draw to its current incarnation as a scholarship competition, the pageant has indexed women’s status during periods of social change―the post-suffrage 1920s, the Eisenhower 1950s, the #MeToo era. This ever-changing institution has been shaped by war, evangelism, the rise of television and reality TV, and, significantly, by contestants who confounded expectations.
Spotlighting individuals, from Yolande Betbeze, whose refusal to pose in swimsuits led an angry sponsor to launch the rival Miss USA contest, to the first black winner, Vanessa Williams, who received death threats and was protected by sharpshooters in her hometown parade, Margot Mifflin shows how women made hard bargains even as they used the pageant for economic advancement. The pageant’s history includes, crucially, those it excluded; the notorious Rule Seven, which required contestants to be “of the white race,” was retired in the 1950s, but no women of color were crowned until the 1980s.
In rigorously researched, vibrant chapters that unpack each decade of the pageant, Looking for Miss America examines the heady blend of capitalism, patriotism, class anxiety, and cultural mythology that has fueled this American ritual.
Review- This is a fascinating historical overview of the Miss America contest from its history to its present and what the future may look like. Mifflin does excellent research, she interviews the still living older Miss America’s, and anyone else who was involved in the contest willing to speak to her. She gives an interesting overview of a beauty pageant that does not know what it wants to be. At times it has been both boycotted by the left and the right, sometimes at the same time; the contest has continued. It has both been a step forward for women and a way to hold them back. Winners were just seen as pretty faces and not taken seriously in their careers but it has also helped women to go college without worrying about student debt. Mifflin gives the reader all the sides and the women who were caught in them. I really enjoyed this book and I recommend it.
I give this book a Five out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.
From the dust jacket- From an author praised for writing “delicious social history” (Dwight Garner, The New York Times) comes a lively account of memorable Miss America contestants, protests, and scandals―and how the pageant, nearing its one hundredth anniversary, serves as an unintended indicator of feminist progress.
Looking for Miss America is a fast-paced narrative history of a curious and contradictory institution. From its start in 1921 as an Atlantic City tourist draw to its current incarnation as a scholarship competition, the pageant has indexed women’s status during periods of social change―the post-suffrage 1920s, the Eisenhower 1950s, the #MeToo era. This ever-changing institution has been shaped by war, evangelism, the rise of television and reality TV, and, significantly, by contestants who confounded expectations.
Spotlighting individuals, from Yolande Betbeze, whose refusal to pose in swimsuits led an angry sponsor to launch the rival Miss USA contest, to the first black winner, Vanessa Williams, who received death threats and was protected by sharpshooters in her hometown parade, Margot Mifflin shows how women made hard bargains even as they used the pageant for economic advancement. The pageant’s history includes, crucially, those it excluded; the notorious Rule Seven, which required contestants to be “of the white race,” was retired in the 1950s, but no women of color were crowned until the 1980s.
In rigorously researched, vibrant chapters that unpack each decade of the pageant, Looking for Miss America examines the heady blend of capitalism, patriotism, class anxiety, and cultural mythology that has fueled this American ritual.
Review- This is a fascinating historical overview of the Miss America contest from its history to its present and what the future may look like. Mifflin does excellent research, she interviews the still living older Miss America’s, and anyone else who was involved in the contest willing to speak to her. She gives an interesting overview of a beauty pageant that does not know what it wants to be. At times it has been both boycotted by the left and the right, sometimes at the same time; the contest has continued. It has both been a step forward for women and a way to hold them back. Winners were just seen as pretty faces and not taken seriously in their careers but it has also helped women to go college without worrying about student debt. Mifflin gives the reader all the sides and the women who were caught in them. I really enjoyed this book and I recommend it.
I give this book a Five out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.
October 24, 2020
Got it because it was on the new book list on the library website and I vaguely remembered watching the contest a few times in middle or high school. I was sort of expecting to hear that the pageant made sense when it started, but it couldn't really keep up with the times despite scholarship and charity elements. I was surprised to discover that the pageant didn't make much sense from the beginning - in the first years (1920s), girls were stopped for indecency at the beach when they were wearing the same bathing suits they had worn in the contest the day before. Also, the scholarship was added pretty early on, to make it seem more upscale. And I didn't know about the connection with Southern and Christian culture. Or the fact that the winners had absolutely no training or support for all the public speaking they did in their "year of service" after they won.
My favorite fact was that in 1921 "at the seaside Bathers' Revue, men, women, and babies in swimsuits competed for prizes." p12. That sounds a lot more egalitarian to have everybody compete in swimsuits.
Anyway, the whole thing is silly and should have ended long ago.
Quote:
"The celebrity soprano and actress Mary Garden, who bobbed her hair in 1921 at age forty-seven, called long hair 'one of the many little shackles that women have cast aside in their passage to freedom.'" p32
My favorite fact was that in 1921 "at the seaside Bathers' Revue, men, women, and babies in swimsuits competed for prizes." p12. That sounds a lot more egalitarian to have everybody compete in swimsuits.
Anyway, the whole thing is silly and should have ended long ago.
Quote:
"The celebrity soprano and actress Mary Garden, who bobbed her hair in 1921 at age forty-seven, called long hair 'one of the many little shackles that women have cast aside in their passage to freedom.'" p32
January 23, 2021
There she is…but she’s not just one thing.
I’d watched the end of a couple televised Miss America pageants and even attended a very small, very local pageant when I was a kid. I wasn’t fascinated by the gowns or the girls, but how they managed to wear those huge earrings and not have them ripped out of their lobes. I was a strange kid.
Since that’s what I thought of the pageants, I picked up this book. I have to admit, picking it up was a total lark. I just saw it at the library and grabbed. I wasn’t all that interested in pageants, but this book certainly opened my eyes. The girls who took part in the early pageants did it for the money and because they wanted to get the notoriety, but many of them were heavily chaperoned and some exploited. I had no idea the first few girls who won the Miss America pageant were sixteen years old. Crazy.
This doesn’t just give the dirt on the pageant, but also the stories of determination and overcoming difficulties. This book talks about the changes in the sixties when the contestants would push back against stereotypes and in the seventies when multicultural women were finishing high in the pageant and changing the ideals of what was beautiful.
If you’re looking for something that’s a little more substantive than it could be and full of great tidbits on the pageant, then this might be the book for you.
I’d watched the end of a couple televised Miss America pageants and even attended a very small, very local pageant when I was a kid. I wasn’t fascinated by the gowns or the girls, but how they managed to wear those huge earrings and not have them ripped out of their lobes. I was a strange kid.
Since that’s what I thought of the pageants, I picked up this book. I have to admit, picking it up was a total lark. I just saw it at the library and grabbed. I wasn’t all that interested in pageants, but this book certainly opened my eyes. The girls who took part in the early pageants did it for the money and because they wanted to get the notoriety, but many of them were heavily chaperoned and some exploited. I had no idea the first few girls who won the Miss America pageant were sixteen years old. Crazy.
This doesn’t just give the dirt on the pageant, but also the stories of determination and overcoming difficulties. This book talks about the changes in the sixties when the contestants would push back against stereotypes and in the seventies when multicultural women were finishing high in the pageant and changing the ideals of what was beautiful.
If you’re looking for something that’s a little more substantive than it could be and full of great tidbits on the pageant, then this might be the book for you.
January 26, 2023
At the end of the book, I felt sorta ambivalent about the journey it took to get to the last page. I think Looking for Miss America would be a great footnote for a person's thesis relating to American femininity and the likes, but the rather short history of the pageantry doesn't feel like there's enough substance to bite my teeth into other than the unsurprising facts that America loves the dichotomy of women. It's also to note that Miss USA is, in fact, different than Miss America and had been quicker on being progressive.
Also, unsurprisingly, there are a lot of women to go over —winners, almost-winners, losers. I'm sure there are also a lot of firsts that are interesting but if the book listed those, it would be not so interesting. There are key players that Mifflin uses throughout the books (Myerson, Williams, Fox) that are important in their own right, but I don't think there was a great thread that united all of them together. The book was mostly historical retelling and a little bit salacious, but I wish there was a grander message to take away from all of this besides people demanding the swimsuit come back.
Also, unsurprisingly, there are a lot of women to go over —winners, almost-winners, losers. I'm sure there are also a lot of firsts that are interesting but if the book listed those, it would be not so interesting. There are key players that Mifflin uses throughout the books (Myerson, Williams, Fox) that are important in their own right, but I don't think there was a great thread that united all of them together. The book was mostly historical retelling and a little bit salacious, but I wish there was a grander message to take away from all of this besides people demanding the swimsuit come back.
November 23, 2025
This book is primarily an entertaining historical narrative of the evolution and changing attitudes toward the Miss America Organization through the years from the 1920s until about the 2000s. I expected more of a critical take by the author, but Mifflin remains relatively unbiased in her writing and instead only states the events and the public opinions about the pageant through the lens of how people felt about it in the past. This is not such a bad thing. Factual and impartial- this book lays out the evidence and allows the reader to mull over everything and form their own opinion about this controversial contest. That being said, however, the book does end very suddenly, without forming any kind of thesis on the current standing or future of the pageant.
In summary, this was a great historical summary of the MAO, but it misses the opportunity to make a more poignant conclusion on the MAO's value in society.
In summary, this was a great historical summary of the MAO, but it misses the opportunity to make a more poignant conclusion on the MAO's value in society.
January 3, 2021
I was skeptical about this book but compelled to find out if there could be a thoughtful and balanced consideration of the Miss America pageant and its legacy, and I was pleasantly surprised that this book is it. I remember enjoying watching the pageant as a child--thinking the beauty pageant was odd and superficial but also enjoying the glitz and glamour of it. Margot Mifflin relays the pageant's history while exploring the racism, elitism, and sexism it perpetuates while still admiring and celebrating the talent and grit of many of the pageant's contestants. She groups former winners into categories ("seekers," "achievers," "rebels," etc.) that demonstrate her careful thought about this American tradition and its impression on our culture. Highly recommended for readers who seek 20th century history, books about Americanism, and feminist topics.
October 16, 2021
Great social history that looks at the role of beauty pageants in conjunction with what was happening with feminist history. You meet some interesting characters who took advantages of the opportunities created for them but many more who were let down by the system. I had no idea that the women had to raise money for a particular charity to be able to enter the pageant. Serious topic presented with a great deal of humor.
I have a good friend who is heavily into pageants and I've learned we just can't discuss it. She sees them as empowering young women to become involved in charity work and using their "crown" to bring attention to causes.
To me, it seems somewhat like a pyramid scheme, as she has created a pageant to help fund her daughter's entry into other pageants. The daughter also earns tuition by coaching young girls in their pageants.
It is time for them to go.
I have a good friend who is heavily into pageants and I've learned we just can't discuss it. She sees them as empowering young women to become involved in charity work and using their "crown" to bring attention to causes.
To me, it seems somewhat like a pyramid scheme, as she has created a pageant to help fund her daughter's entry into other pageants. The daughter also earns tuition by coaching young girls in their pageants.
It is time for them to go.
January 5, 2022
Interesting read, full of fascinating characters. As with all good non-fiction, I came away feeling informed, especially about connections between pageants and social issues I hadn’t previously fully considered. With that said, this would have been a lot easier to read if the narrative was more tightly structured. It felt like the author tried to cover a huge amount in a relatively short book, resulting in a rambling mashup of contestant biographies, anecdotes, social history, and evolution of the Miss America pageant itself. The sheer volume and variety of information was clearly challenging to organize. However, “loosely chronological but with out-of context mentions of events or people that either haven’t been introduced yet or I simply can’t remember in the swirl of what’s already been presented” was tough for me. The ending also felt extremely abrupt.
October 20, 2022
Like most Baby Boomers, I watched the Miss America Pageant as I grew up but didn’t give it much thought. What a delightful surprise awaited me as I read this wonderfully researched and beautifully written social history. Borrowing the imagery of W.E.B. DuBois, one African-American contestant described the “gendered double consciousness” of the competition. That observation succinctly defines the pageant’s existential ambiguity. Originally, little more than a glorified beauty contest invented to drum up increased interest in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the pageant redefined and rebranded itself numerous times during its century-long history. Mifflin provides several compelling biographical sketches of representative winners and includes cultural criticism, literature, and film as means of understanding how Miss America became both a venerated and excoriated symbol of American women.
January 25, 2022
I chose this book because I have fond memories of watching the Miss America pageant with my mom. Back in those days we looked forward to watching this annual event and I was mesmerized by the beautiful dresses and the talent. We accepted it for what it was - entertainment - and never questioned whether or not it was demeaning. I found the history presented in this book very interesting as it told the story of the movement from a "bathing beauty" contest to a scholarship pageant. I enjoyed the former contestants and winners views on that subject. It was also interesting to learn that more than one of the winners did not actually want to win and the difficulties the year of their reign presented.
October 26, 2020
This was a very informative, detailed, and engaging history of the Miss America pageant. There were several contestants and winners whose lives I had never heard of and it was fascinating to learn why Vanessa Williams' win and why she was dethroned. The pop culture depictions of Miss America and the reality of the pageant compared to the similar pageants available to women.
I also appreciated the thoroughness of the bibliography for further readings.
Would recommend to anyone interested in social history, women's history, pop culture, and pageants.
Even if you pick this book up because of the Miss Congeniality movie, you will be enjoy what you learn in this book.
I also appreciated the thoroughness of the bibliography for further readings.
Would recommend to anyone interested in social history, women's history, pop culture, and pageants.
Even if you pick this book up because of the Miss Congeniality movie, you will be enjoy what you learn in this book.
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