Winner of the Popular Culture Association s Emily Toth Best Book in Women s Studies AwardFrom
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 now in its one hundredth year serves as an unintended indicator of feminist
progressLooking 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.
