on such characteristics as physical beauty, talent, personality, communicative skills, and their overall capacity to represent the values of the pageant (Neimark, 40).
The question of how relevant the Miss America Pageant -- and Miss America herself -- remains some 83 years after its beginnings in 1921 is the focus of this report. Miss America was the invention of a group of Atlantic City, New Jersey businessmen and public relations experts, who, desperate to extend the brief tourism season there, developed the idea of holding a bathing beauty contest (Callahan, 178).
In the years since, the pageant has evolved, but one ideal has remained as its cornerstone: virtue. The Miss America Organization (MAO), which oversees the pageant, describes Miss America as a symbol, an image, a role model, what every little girl should want to be and what every mom should want in a daughter (Callahan, 178). Virtue was at the heart of the scandal which erupted in 1984 when African-American winner Vanessa Williams was show in photos published after her victory in poses or clothing that were considered overly "provocative." Our "ideal" Miss America was supposed to be the kind of woman who might parade in a one piece bathing suit before television cameras and audience members and judges, but not the kind of woman who would pose in scant clothes in any other setting!
From the more feminist orientation of the current era, the notion that the ideal woman is one who parades across the stage in a bathing suit wearing high heels seems somewhat archaic. Any number of controversies surrounded the pageant over time. In 1950, one contestant (Yolande Betbeze) refused to wear Catalina swimwear, leading the manufacturer to withdraw its support for the pageant and to create the Miss Universe Pageant the next year (Callahan, 180). In 1945, some people objected to the naming of Bess Myerson, a Jewish contestant, as Miss America. In 1979,...