Download or read book Looking for Miss America written by Margot Mifflin and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Popular Culture Association’s Emily Toth Best Book in Women’s Studies Award 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, now in its one hundredth year, 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 Miss America Through the Looking Glass written by Nancie S. Martin and published by Julian Messner. This book was released on 1985 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the history of the Miss America Pageant, how it is judged, what contestants go through, and how their lives are affected.
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 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 Being Miss America written by Kate Shindle and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-09-01 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts the author's experiences as Miss America 1998, providing a history of the pageant and profiling other former winners.
Download or read book Miss America 1945 written by Susan Dworkin and published by William Morrow Paperbacks. This book was released on 1999-12-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First time in paperback, this unique biography and cultural history is based on History extensive research and interviews with more than one hundred witnesses from the period. Acclaimed novelist and playwright Susan Dworkin skillfully interweaves the absorbing first-person account of how Bess Myerson became the country’s first, and still only, Jewish Miss America in the same year that World War II ended, with a fresh portrait of what life was like for women and Jews in America in the 1930s and ’40s. Her tale of one girl’s coming of age in prefeminist America is “poignant and appealing . . . as much a cameo of an era as a work of biography.” —ALA Booklist
Download or read book Miss America written by Howard Stern and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1996-10-16 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Howard Stern versus the world in Miss America. Including eight pages of full-color photos, this book covers the celebrity shock jocks thoughts on himself and the world in which he leaves. From the author of the New York Times bestselling author of Private Parts.
Download or read book Beauty Queens written by Libba Bray and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2011-05-24 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From bestselling, Printz Award-winning author Libba Bray, the story of a plane of beauty pageant contestants that crashes on a desert island.Teen beauty queens. A "Lost"-like island. Mysteries and dangers. No access to emall. And the spirit of fierce, feral competition that lives underground in girls, a savage brutality that can only be revealed by a journey into the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Oh, the horror, the horror! Only funnier. With evening gowns. And a body count.
Download or read book Bodies of Subversion written by Margot Mifflin and published by powerHouse Books. This book was released on 2013-08-02 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this provocative work full of intriguing female characters from tattoo history, Margot Mifflin makes a persuasive case for the tattooed woman as an emblem of female self-expression." —Susan Faludi Bodies of Subversion is the first history of women’s tattoo art, providing a fascinating excursion to a subculture that dates back into the nineteenth-century and includes many never-before-seen photos of tattooed women from the last century. Author Margot Mifflin notes that women’s interest in tattoos surged in the suffragist 20s and the feminist 70s. She chronicles: * Breast cancer survivors of the 90s who tattoo their mastectomy scars as an alternative to reconstructive surgery or prosthetics. * The parallel rise of tattooing and cosmetic surgery during the 80s when women tattooists became soul doctors to a nation afflicted with body anxieties. * Maud Wagner, the first known woman tattooist, who in 1904 traded a date with her tattooist husband-to-be for an apprenticeship. * Victorian society women who wore tattoos as custom couture, including Winston Churchill’s mother, who wore a serpent on her wrist. * Nineteeth-century sideshow attractions who created fantastic abduction tales in which they claimed to have been forcibly tattooed. “In Bodies of Subversion, Margot Mifflin insightfully chronicles the saga of skin as signage. Through compelling anecdotes and cleverly astute analysis, she shows and tells us new histories about women, tattoos, public pictures, and private parts. It’s an indelible account of an indelible piece of cultural history.” —Barbara Kruger, artist
Download or read book Antkind written by Charlie Kaufman and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bold and boundlessly original debut novel from the Oscar®-winning screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York. LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • “A dyspeptic satire that owes much to Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon . . . propelled by Kaufman’s deep imagination, considerable writing ability and bull’s-eye wit."—The Washington Post “An astonishing creation . . . riotously funny . . . an exceptionally good [book].”—The New York Times Book Review • “Kaufman is a master of language . . . a sight to behold.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND MEN’S HEALTH B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, neurotic and underappreciated film critic (failed academic, filmmaker, paramour, shoe salesman who sleeps in a sock drawer), stumbles upon a hitherto unseen film made by an enigmatic outsider—a film he’s convinced will change his career trajectory and rock the world of cinema to its core. His hands on what is possibly the greatest movie ever made—a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took its reclusive auteur ninety years to complete—B. knows that it is his mission to show it to the rest of humanity. The only problem: The film is destroyed, leaving him the sole witness to its inadvertently ephemeral genius. All that’s left of this work of art is a single frame from which B. must somehow attempt to recall the film that just might be the last great hope of civilization. Thus begins a mind-boggling journey through the hilarious nightmarescape of a psyche as lushly Kafkaesque as it is atrophied by the relentless spew of Twitter. Desperate to impose order on an increasingly nonsensical existence, trapped in a self-imposed prison of aspirational victimhood and degeneratively inclusive language, B. scrambles to re-create the lost masterwork while attempting to keep pace with an ever-fracturing culture of “likes” and arbitrary denunciations that are simultaneously his bête noire and his raison d’être. A searing indictment of the modern world, Antkind is a richly layered meditation on art, time, memory, identity, comedy, and the very nature of existence itself—the grain of truth at the heart of every joke.
Download or read book The Blue Tattoo written by Margot Mifflin and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2009-04-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Based on historical records, including the letters and diaries of Oatman's friends and relatives, The Blue Tattoo is the first book to examine her life from her childhood in Illinois including the massacre, her captivity, and her return to white society - to her later years as a wealthy banker's wife in Texas."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Mr and Mrs American Pie written by Juliet McDaniel and published by Inkshares. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the vein of Where'd You Go, Bernadette, this whip-smart romantic comedy is as incisive as it is funny—and refuses to be thwarted by convention. After getting dumped by her husband, a woman sets out to prove her worth by entering a 'best housewife' pageant in 1970 Palm Springs.
Download or read book 101 Secrets to Winning Beauty Pageants written by Ann-Marie Bivans and published by Citadel Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents advice on the best attitude, clothes and accessories, and performance techniques for beauty pageant competition
Download or read book Pretty Smart written by Penny Pearlman and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2008-12 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "These former Miss Americas are not only pretty smart, but beautiful from the inside out. As they share their personal struggles and triumphs and the lessons they've learned, their stories will put a fire in your belly and fill you with hope."--Jacket
Download or read book Sharlene Wells Miss America written by Sheri L. Dew and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Paints a picture of the total Sharlene-of a young lady who set her sights on the stars and became an American dream come true." -- dust jacket.
Download or read book Amazing Win Amazing Loss written by Angela Perez Baraquio and published by . This book was released on 2014-09 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through personal anecdotes, Angie's unique story is intertwined in these lessons that will inspire young adults, especially women living with unfulfilled dreams. Yet her story is universal. She teaches readers how to find their unique path and to see themselves as strong, beautiful beings, deserving of joy and a satisfying life, amidst any obstacles they may encounter. Angela will encourage and help readers evaluate where they are today and learn ways to write their own success story and live happily, EVEN AFTER tremendous success and tragedy.
