Free Being Miss America: Behind the Rhinestone Curtain (Discovering America) by Kate Shindle Page A

impossible to believe that over the course of a single decade, Jack Kennedy was both elected and killed (and then followed to the grave by his brother Bobby), Martin Luther King and Malcolm X rose to prominence and were assassinated, the Black Panthers ascended, the Vietnam War sent a generation into battle, riots broke out at Stonewall, chaos overwhelmed Woodstock, and the American flag was planted on the moon.
    Although Don McLean’s 1971 song “American Pie” memorializes February 3, 1959—when a plane crash killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper—as “The Day the Music Died,” the phrase could just as easily be applied to many of the events of the 1960s. On the thirtieth anniversary of the crash, writer Claire Suddath examined the extensive reach and resonance of that very specific piece of music, which “turned the plane crash into a metaphor for the moment when the United States lost its last shred of innocence. McLean envisioned that last Buddy Holly concert in Clear Lake, Iowa: teenagers in pink carnations and pick-up trucks, dancing and falling in love and dancing some more. The snow fell silently outside as the country teetered on the brink of the 1960s; no one in the ballroom had any idea what would happen next.”
    The death of American innocence in the 1960s has filled volumes of prose, reams of poetry, miles of film, and no small amount of vinyl. The chaos and rebellion that would consume the nation, as its heart was broken over and over again, clearly manifested in a multitude of ways. Unlike their parents, often referred to as “the Greatest Generation” because of their unwavering patriotism and self-sacrifice during the Second World War, this crop of young Americans was divided. Some clung to tradition, believing that the unrest was a passing fad. But many more revolted. Against a government that was sending them to die, against social mores they felt were unjust and discriminatory, against institutions that expected them to sit down, be quiet, and conform. In other words, against almost every thing that Miss America represented. Miss America belonged to Camelot, and Camelot was dead.
    As starry-eyed belles dreamed of the crown, fire hoses and police dogs were turned loose on civil rights protesters. Miss Alabama hopefuls in white ball gowns glided across the stages of their state while Rosa Parks marched from Selma to Montgomery. The best and brightest of Illinois focused on the Convention Hall runway, while protesters rioted at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. Sure, the pageant still aired in millions of homes, and ratings continued to rise; undoubtedly, it served as a security blanket for those we were hoping against hope that everybody would just calm down. But hindsight illuminates precisely how Miss America, as an institution, quickly began to seem remarkably tone deaf.
    And of course, there was one more big headache for the pageant during this unstable time: emerging from the chaos were women named Friedan and Steinem and Morgan, the second wave of feminism, the National Organization for Women, and a mutiny against existing gender roles. This new type of feminist ferociously rejected the emphasis on physical beauty, demureness, and the traditional concept of a woman’s “proper place.” The second-wave agenda emphasized autonomy, activism, education, and intelligence. Through this lens, even the most basic, careless customs of the pageant—like routinely and universally referring to the contestants as “girls”—appeared to be not only old-fashioned but also a lightning rod for outrage. Within a few short years, the new feminism would take aim squarely at Miss America.
    It came to a head in September of 1968. Credited by many as the first major American feminist protest, it remains one of the least accurately reported. Over the years, it has come to be known as a bra-burning mob extravaganza, which at least has some basis in truth. Organizer Robin Morgan, on