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

behalf of New York Radical Women, drafted a press release proclaiming simply “NO MORE MISS AMERICA!” She invited “Women’s Liberation Groups, black women, high-school and college women, women’s peace groups, women’s welfare and social-work groups, women’s job-equality groups, pro–birth control and pro-abortion groups—women of every political persuasion” to protest “the image of Miss America, an image thatoppresses women in every area in which it purports to represent us.”
    When Morgan and her group reached Atlantic City, they found that the crowd waiting there for them far outnumbered expectations. Although history remembers them as bra burners, there was actually no fire on the Boardwalk that night. The protest, instead, took aim at the “degrading mindless-boob-girlie symbol.” Coverage of the event, staged as it was outside one of the biggest television broadcasts of the year, was significant. Most reports position it as the breakthrough moment of the women’s movement, when the rising tensions coalesced, found a target, and went soaring past the tipping point into the public consciousness.
    For the most part—aside from some biting words from Bert Parks—the pageant ignored the protesters, focusing instead on Miss Illinois, Judi Ford, the bubbly blonde trampolinist who won the crown that night to become Miss America 1969. It was predictable, in many ways, that the pageant’s leaders would decline to engage the opposing viewpoint. Especially on their own turf. But the visual was insurmountable. A new type of woman was outside, raging against the machine; a traditional type of woman was inside, blithely competing in swimsuit, talent, and evening gown. Whether there were closet feminist sympathizers among that year’s Miss America contestants or not, September 7, 1968, represented a visible split between the old and the new—one that would inexorably alter the pageant’s image and reputation.
    Of course, there were exceptions along the way. Colorado’s Rebecca King (1974) stood out because of her law-student demeanor and lack of tears at her crowning, but also because she was a vocal supporter of the Supreme Court’s
Roe v. Wade
ruling. The pageant was once again caught flat-footed by the arrival of a winner with a mind ofher own; King’s pre-recorded farewell speech a year later made a strong statement by essentially making no statement at all. Gone was the sweet-faced blonde with stick-straight hippie hair; she had been replaced by a glamorous woman who had clearly mastered the art of hot rollers. Becky King may have advanced the image of Miss America on the night of her crowning, and for every one of the 363-ish days that followed. In that last moment, though, she seemed to be a far more traditional Miss America than viewers probably expected.
    A small moral victory in terms of the pageant’s evolution can be identified just two years later. New York’s Tawny Godin (1976) was similarly outspoken, and had a similarly unfussy, non-pageant look on the night she was crowned. A few months into her year,
People
called her “a lunge forward in Miss America’s journey into the 20th century,” noting that she had admitted to smoking pot, believed “abortion and premarital sex” were “matters of individual choice,” and had “nothing against homosexuals.” Godin, too, was glammed up on the same night one year later. Tellingly, though, Godin’s farewell speech included gratitude that “America has accepted me and my beliefs for what I am.”
    But Godin’s target audience—and King’s, for that matter—had probably tuned out by then. Especially their peers, who were discovering other passions to pursue and fight for. At the beginning of the decade, for example, Phyllis George (1971) didn’t seem to have much to say at her post-crowning press conference aside from talking about her pet crab. Although George was for years one of the most visible and recognizable Miss Americas, the