Looking for Miss America: A Pageant's 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood

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The Miss America pageant is nearing its one hundred year anniversary in September 2021, and this narrative history offers a fascinating and comprehensive look at the institution's journey from swimsuit competition to scholarship contest offering over three million dollars each year The author Margot Mifflin is celebrated for telling women's stories in the arts and telling them well: she excels in demonstrating the shifting view of women and their bodies, and how that view has evolved with society's changing relationship to beauty and gender roles. Mifflin is an entertaining, energetic, intelligent writer and she's as charismatic and engaging a guide to this social history as a This American Life or RadioLab podcast cost In the book's introduction, Mifflin notes "the pageant has been in constant dialogue with feminism, though rarely in step with it." Deeply researched and compellingly written, this book examines that shifting conversation through social, political, and cultural change in America Looking for Miss America breaks down the blend of capitalism, patriotism, class anxiety and cultural mythology that has fueled the pageant, the racial biases it has perpetuated, and the social mobility it has enabled. Color and b&w, photo insert Drawing from interviews and compelling first-hand accounts, Looking For Miss America will appeal to both fans and critics of the pageant, and shines in its portraits of women, including contestants, organizers, protestors, and those historically excluded from participation Some notable figures highlighted in the book: Lenora Slaughter, director of the pageant for over two decades, Bette Cooper, who disappeared the night before taking her crown, Bess Myerson, the first (and only) Jewish winner selected after WWII, Yolande Betbeze, who refused to wear a swimsuit the year after winning and critiqued the pageant's racial biases, Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America, who went on to become a Grammy-nominated singer and actress, and many more complex women who both shaped and struggled against the pageant's form The book also highlights the ever-changing pageant rules, including the addition of scholarships in the 1940's, requiring winners sell war bonds during World War II, the notorious Rule Seven banning non-white women from competing formalized in the 1940s and retired in the mid-1950s, and the removal of the swimsuit competition in 2018 From the introductory chapter, "It's safe to say, considering neither a Latina nor a Muslim has ever won, that Miss America does not represent America. But the pageant crystallizes many distinctly American impulses: a dual fixation on women's virtue and sexuality, a baffling fascination with royalty (Is there anything less American than a crown?), the belief that education and intellect can be demonstrated in a 20-second interview, and the unshakeable conviction that young women are the best women and it's their duty to entertain you." Mifflin currently resides in Nyack, New York Looking for Miss America is Catapult Associate Editor Megha Majumdar's second acquisition on the Counterpoint list