Download or read book Looking for Miss America written by Margot Mifflin and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 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, nearing its one hundredth anniversary, serves as an unintended indicator of feminist progress Looking 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.

Download or read book There She Was written by Amy Argetsinger and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-11-08 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post style editor’s fascinating and irresistible look back on the Miss America pageant as it approaches its 100th anniversary. The sash. The tears. The glittering crown. And of course, that soaring song. For all its pomp and kitsch, the Miss America pageant is indelibly written into the American story of the past century. From its giddy origins as a summer’s-end tourist draw in Prohibition-era Atlantic City, it blossomed into a televised extravaganza that drew tens of millions of viewers in its heyday and was once considered the highest honor that a young woman could achieve. For two years, Washington Post reporter and editor Amy Argetsinger visited pageants and interviewed former winners and contestants to unveil the hidden world of this iconic institution. There She Was spotlights how the pageant survived decades of social and cultural change, collided with a women’s liberation movement that sought to abolish it, and redefined itself alongside evolving ideas about feminism. For its superstars—Phyllis George, Vanessa Williams, Gretchen Carlson—and for those who never became household names, Miss America was a platform for women to exercise their ambitions and learn brutal lessons about the culture of fame. Spirited and revelatory, There She Was charts the evolution of the American woman, from the Miss America catapulted into advocacy after she was exposed as a survivor of domestic violence to the one who used her crown to launch a congressional campaign; from a 1930s winner who ran away on the night of her crowning to a present-day rock guitarist carving out her place in this world. Argetsinger dissects the scandals and financial turmoil that have repeatedly threatened to kill the pageant—and highlights the unexpected sisterhood of Miss Americas fighting to keep it alive.

Download or read book Here She Is written by Hilary Levey Friedman and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh exploration of American feminist history told through the lens of the beauty pageant world. Many predicted that pageants would disappear by the 21st century. Yet they are thriving. America’s most enduring contest, Miss America, celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2020. Why do they persist? In Here She Is, Hilary Levey Friedman reveals the surprising ways pageants have been an empowering feminist tradition. She traces the role of pageants in many of the feminist movement’s signature achievements, including bringing women into the public sphere, helping them become leaders in business and politics, providing increased educational opportunities, and giving them a voice in the age of #MeToo. Using her unique perspective as a NOW state president, daughter to Miss America 1970, sometimes pageant judge, and scholar, Friedman explores how pageants became so deeply embedded in American life from their origins as a P.T. Barnum spectacle at the birth of the suffrage movement, through Miss Universe’s bathing beauties to the talent- and achievement-based competitions of today. She looks at how pageantry has morphed into culture everywhere from The Bachelor and RuPaul’s Drag Race to cheer and specialized contests like those for children, Indigenous women, and contestants with disabilities. Friedman also acknowledges the damaging and unrealistic expectations pageants place on women in society and discusses the controversies, including Miss America’s ableist and racist history, Trump’s ownership of the Miss Universe Organization, and the death of child pageant-winner JonBenét Ramsey. Presenting a more complex narrative than what’s been previously portrayed, Here She Is shows that as American women continue to evolve, so too will beauty pageants.

Download or read book Finding My Little Red Hat written by Jo-Carroll Dennison and published by . This book was released on 2021-09-12 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in a men's prison in Florence Arizona in 1923, Jo-Carroll Dennison learned to walk (and dance and sing) on a medicine show traveling the American West and later taught herself to trick-ride horses in the circus. The huckster snake-oil salesman who ran the medicine show tried to rape her at age 12 -- she fended him off. She was crowned Miss America in 1942. Dennison shows us the underbelly of the Miss America organization of the time, and shares an unvarnished view of a starlet's life in Hollywood through the 1940s. Her marriage to Phil Silvers opened many doors. It was rarefied air. Invited to dance by Howard Hughes and having a deep love affair with Sydney Chaplin (son of Charlie), "normal" life revolved around the Hollywood party scene at the homes of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, and Gene Kelly. The highlight was being part of the core group in weekly gatherings at Kelly's, full of song (including impromptu piano with Andre Previn and Paul Robeson) and "radical liberal intellectualism" along with occasional drop-ins the likes of Garbo (at a Tupperware party, no less), Garland, and Monroe. Un-seduced by the glitter of men in power and their infamous casting couches, Dennison shows us that superstars and power brokers are mere mortals, and often worse. Eighty years before the Me Too movement, Dennison endured inhumane treatment by boys, men, and institutions: among them charlatans, producers, directors, and therapists. She reports on the ravages of McCarthyism on friends and throughout the cultural world. Her second marriage inspired the storyline for Redford and Streisands' dilemma in The Way We Were: She was the free-spirited liberal and he was he conservative pragmatist. She writes that "to stifle one's natural impulses, is to eventually destroy oneself". With that in mind, she ultimately steers away from film roles that would have propelled her to a higher level of stardom -- including Chaplin's Limelight -- but would have required some form of personal compromise. In a bid to recover her little red hat of courage -- worn as a child to unfamiliar schools while on the road with the medicine show -- in 1976 Dennison decamps to Mexico's San Miguel de Allende to write. Whether stroking poisonous Gila Monsters, being unexpectedly hoisted high in the air in an elephant's trunk, or finding soulmates among her many four-legged companions, a common thread through her life is a sublime connection to nature. Serendipity and intuition are everything in this story. Key forks in the road made all the difference. Through choices born of being true to herself, Dennison crafts a life entirely worth living while threading the needles of anger and fear with love and fearlessness. The book is heavily illustrated with vintage photos going back more than a century. Includes mature content.

Download or read book The Celebration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Founding of Alfred University written by Alfred University and published by . This book was released on 1937 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book American Historical Pageantry written by David Glassberg and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 1990 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What images shape Americans' perceptions of their past? How do particular versions of history become the public history? And how have these views changed over time? David Glassberg explores these important questions by examining the pageantry craze of the

Download or read book Troubled Commemoration written by Robert Cook and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2007-06 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Troubled Commemoration, Robert J. Cook recounts the planning, organization, and ultimate failure of United States Civil War Centennial and reveals how the broad-based public history extravaganza was derailed by its appearance during the decisive phase of the civil rights movement.

Download or read book The Mississippi Valley Historical Review written by and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes articles and reviews covering all aspects of American history. Formerly the Mississippi Valley Historical Review,

Download or read book Pageants and Plays Depicting the Life of George Washington and His Time written by United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission and published by . This book was released on 1931 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Effective English written by Philander Priestley Claxton and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Time to Say Hello written by Katherine Jenkins and published by Orion. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The UK's biggest-selling classical artist reveals how her angelic voice has shot her to superstardom... Katherine Jenkins is an international singing superstar who has redefined a music genre: she has brought classical music to the masses and inspired young and old with her incredible voice, her glamorous looks and, above all, her love for music, her country and her fans. Born in Neath, South Wales, Katherine won national acclaim as the BBC Welsh Choirgirl of the year and soon after a place at the Royal Academy of Music. Auditioning for a terrifying panel of industry experts at Universal Music she came away with the largest recording deal in classical music history. And so began Katherine's meteoric rise to stardom. TIME TO SAY HELLO is Katherine's incredible story. Packed with laughter, adventure, heartbreak and music, it is the tale of a dream coming true and one that will keep you gripped to the last note ¿

Download or read book The Cleveland Year Book written by and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Pageants in Great Britain and the United States written by Caroline Hill Davis and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Bulletin of the Public Affairs Information Service written by Public Affairs Information Service and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Staging Indigeneity written by Katrina Phillips and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-01-29 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As tourists increasingly moved across the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a surprising number of communities looked to capitalize on the histories of Native American people to create tourist attractions. From the Happy Canyon Indian Pageant and Wild West Show in Pendleton, Oregon, to outdoor dramas like Tecumseh! in Chillicothe, Ohio, and Unto These Hills in Cherokee, North Carolina, locals staged performances that claimed to honor an Indigenous past while depicting that past on white settlers' terms. Linking the origins of these performances to their present-day incarnations, this incisive book reveals how they constituted what Katrina Phillips calls "salvage tourism"—a set of practices paralleling so-called salvage ethnography, which documented the histories, languages, and cultures of Indigenous people while reinforcing a belief that Native American societies were inevitably disappearing. Across time, Phillips argues, tourism, nostalgia, and authenticity converge in the creation of salvage tourism, which blends tourism and history, contestations over citizenship, identity, belonging, and the continued use of Indians and Indianness as a means of escape, entertainment, and economic development.

Download or read book Railway Age written by and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 2188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Dramatic Index written by and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: