The 1968 Protest of the Miss America Pageant

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Table of Contents

Core Claims, Goals, and Target
Major Participants
Form of Collective Action
Cultural Representations
Conclusion
Works Cited

The Second Wave of Feminism dates back to the beginning of the 1960s and stretches out to the 1980s. Feminist activists managed to accomplish many notable achievements throughout this period. Among these was the establishment of the first department of Women’s Studies and respective programs at Cornell and the University of San Diego, the recognition of lesbian rights, the development of feminist art, a significant number of court cases concerning the issues of gender equality and discrimination, and the legalization of first-trimester abortion, to name a few.

This paper focuses on a movement that occurred within the Second Wave of Feminism, at the end of the 1960s. To be more precise, the particular movement that is explored in this paper is the 1968 protest of the Miss America Pageant. This movement can be viewed as consisting of two different events that happened within the same location and time frame and were directed at two different issues—a protest against beauty contests as competitions that degrade women, and a protest against the exclusion of African-American women from beauty contests (Craig n. p.).

Core Claims, Goals, and Target

The Miss America Pageant protest took place on September 7, 1968, in Atlantic City (Green 270). The participants gathered to stand against the image of women that the pageant promoted as well as the set of values and views it stood for. In particular, the activists protested against the public evaluation of women based on their looks, by a predominantly male jury, as an action degrading the value of women and their contribution to society.

The main target of the protesters was the Miss America Pageant that was held that day. The core claim of the activists was that the beauty contest served as one of the key phenomena determining the national view of what an “ideal woman” should be and look like. This event became an annual tradition and grew to produce a powerful impact as its audience became larger and larger every year. The values promoted by the pageant conflicted with those the feminist activists were trying to popularize. In particular, career-building opportunities for women and equal employment rights clashed with the views of a woman as primarily a housewife and a mother. The feminists’ attempts to communicate the value of women as intellectuals and professionals were faced with the bold objectification and focus on external beauty that the contest proclaimed.

The goal of the protesters was to draw public attention to the event to provoke critical thinking in the masses about the kind of ideas the pageant stood for and how much harm they could produce for women, as a population group working hard to win more respect, fit into new roles, defeat stereotypes, and adopt unconventional lifestyles. In other words, the Miss America Pageant was a very clear and symbolic representation of traditional gender roles: of women doing their best to please men and fit into male perceptions of “ideal females,” and men acting as judges of women’s capabilities and value-based mostly on the women’s appearance. Rosenberry and Roos add that the theme song of the Miss America Pageant epitomized “the queen of femininity” and emphasized the idea that the perceptions of women’s most important characteristics, typical for the contest, were general standards for evaluating women, applicable throughout the country (151).

The second protest against the pageant, taking place on the same day, targeted the contest from a different perspective. Namely, the activists who participated in the second protest fought against the beauty standards that were being promoted in the country, where beauty contests and the search for an ideally beautiful woman involved only white women, completely excluding African-Americans as not fitting into what was considered an “acceptable” appearance for a beautiful woman (Craig n.p.). The major claim of this protest was that the division created by the initiators of beauty contests in the United States enforced the alienation of ethnic minorities and their diminished status as lacking value and “others.”

Major Participants

The group of protesters who gathered to denounce the idea of beauty contests was relatively small and included one or two hundred participants only; the activists identified themselves as a part of the Women’s Liberation movement. Interestingly, regardless of the small size of the group of protestors, the event received relatively thorough mass media coverage; thus, it is possible to state that the protesters achieved their primary goal: to raise awareness and attract public attention to the matter (Rosenberry and Roos 151). Moreover, in response to the reflection of the protest in the news, many women from nearby areas started to come to the Atlantic City pageant location to take part in the event and join the Women’s Liberation organization and the New York Radical Women.

The core message carried by the activists was to emphasize that, while female beauty and appearance, in general, are viewed as the major criteria defining a woman’s value, there exists a very powerful exclusion of women’s achievements of any other nature—intellectual, professional, and social (Rosenberry and Roos 151). In other words, the solution that the feminist activists proposed was to stop focusing on so-called “standards” as needless and limiting stereotypes and start seeing new qualities that deserve respect and appreciation.

Form of Collective Action

The protesters, whose purpose was to denounce the beauty pageant, initiated an action that involved several activities. First of all, the activists carried signs with slogans such as “I am a woman—not a toy, a pet, or a mascot” and “No more beauty standards—everyone is beautiful!” (Green 270; Rosenberry and Roos 151). Second, the action for which the Miss America Pageant protest of 1968 is best known is what later came to be called “bra-burning.” To be more precise, the women involved in the protest had a large trash bin that was specifically brought to the event for the public burning of attributes associated with the objectification of women and the harmful focus on appearances and traditional gender roles that often discredited women’s achievements and personalities.

In particular, the feminist protesters burned such items as lingerie, false eyelashes, pans, pots, mops, curlers, girdles, wigs, and issues of magazines that promoted the use of all of these items—Cosmopolitan, Family Circle, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Playboy, among others (Rosenberry and Roos 151; Green 270). Apart from the slogans and the bra-burning, there were picket lines, marching, and promotion of the action. Also, the protesters were willing to meet and speak with beauty pageant contestants and persuade them to join the protest and denounce the harmful values of the contest. The women in charge of the action announced that, in the cases of arrests, they would only agree to comply with the requirements of the police if female representatives of law enforcement were to arrest them; interestingly, at that time in Atlantic City, the legislation did not permit policewomen to carry out arrests (Green 270).

The other protest was organized in the form of another beauty pageant that included only Black women as contestants, promoting pride, confidence, and equality. The protest was covered by the press but did not become as powerful as the bra-burning event.

Cultural Representations

The representations used by the feminists protesting against the beauty contest involved items associated with traditional gender roles and the objectification of women: household appliances (such as mops and pans) and beauty tools (such as curlers, girdles, bras, and wigs) created to help women fit into artificially promoted beauty standards with no correspondence to reality.

The representations of the Miss Black America contest involved ethnic self-expression on the part of the participating women, e.g., wearing traditional African-style hairdos and doing ethnic dances. The objective was to emphasize and embrace diversity.

Conclusion

The bra-burning protest was one of the best-known feminist actions to take place during the Second Wave of Feminism. This event is often looked at as a controversial action; however, it was a loud and powerful statement expressing a valid point concerning the harmful and destructive impact of beauty pageants as promoting artificial beauty standards, diminishing women, and focusing on appearances while overlooking personalities and intellectual achievements. The Miss Black America contest is noteworthy as the first step toward the inclusion of Black women and the promotion of diverse beauty standards.

Works Cited

Craig, Maxine Leeds. Ain’t I a Beauty Queen?: Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2002. Print.

Green, Howard L. Words that Make New Jersey History: A Primary Source Reader. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005. Print.

Rosenberry, Lynn and Johan Roos. Bridging the Gender Gap: Seven Principles for Achieving Gender Balance. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2014. Print.

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