Miss America ‘68, women’s lib, and the politics of beauty

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. There was a time when the Miss America pageant was the biggest show in America. Tens of millions of people gathered around their televisions every September, and for years, it was the highest-rated broadcast in the country. Today, the Miss America pageant has become more like a relic. It doesn't even air on television anymore. But back in September of 1968, Miss America was a symbol of what a woman should be, and the target of a burgeoning women's literature. That year, one of the most iconic moments in American history took place, feminists on the Atlantic City boardwalk setting fire to their bras. There's just one problem. The bra burning never actually happened. My guest today, historian Mickey McElyea, writes in her new book, Liberation Summer, that the bra burning was a creation of the newspapers, invented before the protest even began. And that detail matters, because it meant the women's liberation movement was defined by a caricature before it could define itself. The real story, she says, is bigger than the myth. That same afternoon, three groups of women took a stand. Feminist protesters, contestants of the first-ever Miss Black America pageant, and the women who came to defend Miss America herself. McElyea argues, the fight that started that day never ended, that beauty in America has always been a fight over power, one she traces through the rise of the religious right, the Me Too era, and what commentators now call Mar-a-Lago face, the strikingly uniform look of the women in President Trump's orbit. Mickey McElyea is a professor of history at the University of Connecticut. Her previous book, The Politics of Mourning, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Mickey McElyea, welcome to Fresh Air. Oh, thank you for having me. And thank you so much for this book. And I actually want to start with that remarkable DJ, because I think it's such a great detail from your book about this myth that these throngs of women were throwing their bras into like a bin that was on fire on the Atlantic City boardwalk. When you write, it was actually born in a newsroom days before the protest. Tell us how the press created the bra burner. The figure of the bra burning feminist becomes a caricature in newspapers in the days leading up to the Miss America pageant protest, as the protest has been circulating through the press, and as the press moves forward. And as women's liberationists are using those stories to try to get more women to come to Atlantic City and protest the pageant. It is a comment, sort of a throwaway comment, from one activist who says, you know, maybe we could even burn our bras. But that is never something that actually takes place. It gets seized in that moment as the figure for headlines in syndicated stories across the country. So it isn't just in the New York press, which is where these women are and where these stories originate. But UPI, the AP, all of these papers run versions of this story. And local newspaper copy setters and copywriters do headlines that say, bras are burning, will be burning at the Miss America pageant. And so by the time they get there, they are already bra burners. When in fact, they throw bras at the Miss America pageant. And they throw bras into the Freedom Garbage Can. Right. And they don't set them on fire. But that detail just becomes kind of like the mark of that moment. It's the first version of history that then goes down in history. So take us to the protest. Can you tell us the three factions of women who were confronting one another adjacent to the boardwalk and on the boardwalk on that night in 1968? The first group of women are women's liberationists who were there to challenge the pageant. In its objectification of women, in its relationship to militarism, its promotion of the war in Vietnam, and in the exploitative consumer frameworks in which Miss Americas were trapped and were put to for advertising. The second group of people who were doing an entirely different pageant to challenge the racism of the Miss America organization and the exclusions of the beauty ideas. The ideal that was represented there was the Miss Black America pageant. This was the first time that pageant was held. And it was held two blocks away in Atlantic City to make exactly that point. The third group of women were pageant contestants from earlier pageants and pageant fans who challenged women's liberation's representation of the pageant as being exploitation, as being negative, and challenged the vision of liberationism. This was the first womanhood that the women's liberationists represented. I want you to take us back because we're in such a different world today in the way that we think about pageants and we watch pageants. But help us understand what Miss America meant to the country in 1968. What was the story it was selling? The Miss America pageant first happens in 1921 in Atlantic City. And it's originally designed as a vehicle. A vehicle for extending the summer season for an extra week beyond Labor Day weekend. And as a way to keep crowds coming. So it's interesting to think about it as originally it's a marketing device. And it's a marketing device that is selling women in swimsuits and the access to women's bodies. The original ones were much larger. They involved beach parades. There was a man who played King Neptune. He arrived on a boat that was covered. Covered with women and shells. Total spectacle, yeah. It is. It is complete. It's enormous. And it actually gets really big over those first few years until the end of the 1920s when it seems to have have it is both been protested by different groups in the country but has has lost its luster for the large hotel interests that have been supporting it. But as you move through the 1930s, the 1940s during the Great Depression, it is a large largely reduced, it doesn't happen for a couple of years, but it really becomes the Miss America pageant that that we understand today in the 1940s and the post World War Two moment. And Atlantic City itself is is crucial both to mobilizing for war and then for the demobilization that occurs later because those large hotels and enormous convention center provide the institutional structures for processing enormous numbers of men in the aftermath. They provide hotel rooms for for injured troops and for men dealing with really significant injuries from their war service to sort of transition into their lives back home. And so really, it sounds like it was almost an act of patriotism and to to bring the spirits up of Americans and war heroes as they came back. Oh, absolutely. And it's a space that had been so identified with that there's there's a story in a nationally circulated magazine around the time that says, now it's not just Miss America that's that's on the boardwalk, but Mr. America is there to commenting on the fact that the city is now overrun with new inductees into the service. But in that moment, the sort of military patriotism, those associations that will then be so cemented and so powerful. By the 1960s are really coalescing in ways that the pageant had been popular. It had been the subject of films that had been the subject of scandals. People have seen the pageant all over the country because in the 20s, it's being shown in newsreels before feature films. So or or they're listening to it live on the radio. But by the 1940s, it really gets this association of this is representative of the United States and it is these. Beautiful, young, white women that best identify not so much the subject of the United States, but the objects to be fought over, judged to be inspired by, but less so subjects of their own lives in those moments. And that becomes a real struggle, I think, within the pageant, particularly as at the same time, the scholarship feature becomes a big part of it. Because a big part of it is. It's the women are receiving scholarships. It's for scholarship money. The winner 1968 in particular. It's it's one of the most documented years in American history. But that's one of the things I find really interesting about your book, because it's so comprehensive that I mean, you're really telling the foundational story of the women's liberation movement, second wave feminism. But you're telling us you're taking us from the past to the moment to then the future. there. And I was very curious about why you felt like you had to do that versus focusing in on the meaning of that particular time period. Did you feel like you couldn't really tell that story without telling everything else? Absolutely. There's so much there, and there are so many people there. Because also, you tell someone, I'm working on 1968, and I think probably one of their first responses is, really? Do we really need more? And what I hope people understand from this book is that there is so much more history there that needs to be told, and that it's history that will transform how we think of the period. And so what I've done by putting these three pieces together is just take in that light that we shine on 68, that we shine on the 68 presidential race, right? Because this is very much a political history. If you just shift that beam just a little bit, there is this cast of women from various political positions, from various places in the country, who have central roles in making this moment, who so often aren't included because of things like, here's the standard chronology. There was a burnt bra. Aren't these pictures great? You know, hilarity, a Miss America pageant. But it was— It really does a disservice. Here's the thing about that protest that, among other things, has real teeth. So these women came to Atlantic City, these protesters, these activists, armed with the language of the Black freedom struggle, fires declaring slavery exists. They're chanting about liberation, and they take in much of that vocabulary from Black people without ever really seeing. the black women standing right there. And that is not a footnote, although it has been for several decades. That's kind of the crack in the foundation of the whole movement, the one that never really got repaired, really, even to this day. When did you realize this story was about that fracture? Yeah, absolutely. And in 2009, I read a book by the sociologist Maxine Leeds Craig, and the book's title is Ain't I a Beauty Queen? And it was about black beauty culture, about connections between black pageantry and activism. And the introduction to that book starts with the two protests that happened against the Miss America pageant that weekend in Atlantic City. Now, by that time, I'd been a professor of history. I had been a professor of women, gender, race, and sexuality. For four years, I worked on this in graduate school. I was teaching lectures about the Miss America pageant and this protest, right? I was using it as a way to get at all of these things and also to try to challenge the suggestion that this was somehow superficial. I had never heard of the Miss Black America pageant. You didn't? I don't think I have ever had a moment of greater doubt in my abilities as a historian. I am someone who has spent my career writing about the ramifications of representations of slavery or the misrepresentations of slavery over time and the effect that has on our politics. I include among my specialties African American history, African American women's history in particular. And I was learning that that protest happened the same day for the first time in 2009. Someone else with a long relationship to this world is President Donald Trump. And you write that it's no coincidence that his path to the presidency actually ran through beauty pageants. And it starts on that same boardwalk where this book begins, where this protest begins. Take us back to Atlantic City in the 1980s. A lot of us know this history, but it has been erased from our memory because there's just been so much that has happened since then with President Trump. But how did his involvement begin? His involvement with the pageant begins as he starts his casino ownership in Atlantic City. In the early 1980s, Donald Trump starts developing casinos and becomes a real fixture of the culture there, but particularly pageant culture, particularly the Miss America pageant. He attends every year. He is very visible in terms of the publicity. He will go on to be a judge in the Miss America pageant before then in the early 90s, he purchases the Miss Universe pageant group that includes the Miss USA pageant, which was for a long time the primary sort of for cultural prevalence, the primary competitor to the Miss America pageant. Can you tell us very quickly the distinctions, though, between Miss America and Miss USA? Because there are differences. I've always thought of them differently. Oh, they're absolutely different. And the Miss USA pageant is the product of a Miss America challenging both the pageant and the general culture. In 1950, Yolanda Betbese said she was an opera singer. That was her talent. And she said she would not appear in public in a swimsuit after the pageant, that there was no reason why she should be in a swimsuit talking to reporters and that she wasn't a body. She was an opera singer and a talented person. The pageant stood by this because it fit the vision of respectability and the kind of woman they wanted to represent the Miss America crown. and this is Fresh Air. Mickey McElyea. Her new book, Liberation Summer, revisits September 1968, when three groups of women converged on the Atlantic City boardwalk. Feminists protesting the Miss America pageant, contestants in the first ever Miss Black America pageant, and women defending Miss America herself. McElyea argues the collision that day created a politics of beauty that runs through the rise of the religious right, the Me Too era, and all the way to today. She's a professor of history at the University of Connecticut, and her previous book, The Politics of Mourning, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. I think what's so fascinating in particular is you break down these individual characters and their roles leading up to this Liberation Summer, and what goes on to happen is the line between the politics of beauty and what we're seeing today with the Trump administration. And I think that knowing all of this history and understanding that Trump, he stepped into this world in the late 80s, early 90s, and taking it farther back, what were some surprises to you when you see that it almost looks like a straight line? It almost seems inevitable that we would be here. I would argue that it is. That in 1968, in this moment when these three different forces, these three different forces who are all women, come together in that geographic spot on the Atlantic City boardwalk and come together around the Miss America pageant, what is set off there is a politics of beauty where beauty is both highlighted as the terrain of power and female beauty is the currency of American politics. And in 1968, you have women's liberationists challenging that objectification. You have Miss Black America pageant, the organizers of the pageant and the contestants. But you have the Miss Black America pageant arguing that to be objectified as beautiful, to be beautiful, to be beautiful, to be beautiful, in a white supremacist society is itself a kind of privilege. And that the struggle over beauty isn't about rejecting the pageant, but that to highlight black women's beauty is politically crucial. And then you have the counter protesters who literally are holding signs with Nixon for president buttons saying the only thing wrong with Miss America is that she's beautiful. And that she is our ideal. And that sets off a political conversation that also saturates reactions to women's liberation, that this is the moment that the new right and the Christian right are coalescing and coming together around these issues. And women are using beauty as both their political power, as their currency, and they're challenging the limitations. Right. So beauty isn't just, it isn't just this set of oppressive beauty standards. It is the terrain of politics itself. Okay. Let's talk about the Miss Black America pageant. That historic night, 1968, while feminists were at those barricades and the cameras were locked on Convention Hall, another radical thing was happening in Atlantic City just a few blocks away at the Ritz-Carlton. And that one didn't start until midnight. Tell us what you learned specifically, not just about the Miss Black America pageant, but what it was responding to. So the Miss America pageant had never had a black finalist by 1968. It would not have a black finalist walk the stage in the nationally televised pageant until 1970. And the Miss Black America pageant was directly focused on challenging that exclusion, but highlighting that exclusion as the product of white supremacist beauty standards that did not, did not include black women. And that that exclusion was both central to, central to white supremacist power structures, but also central to black people's understandings of their own value in society. I think one of the things that I learned while doing this research was the tension that's present in the organizers. It becomes mistakenly called an NAACP pageant. This is a huge point of controversy within the NAACP, and it is something that the national organization disavows the following year. It makes very clear we are not running a beauty pageant. Because I think the thing that is so upsetting to many in the NAACP is it appears to be to them a separatist pageant, that it is not about integrating the Miss America pageant, but that it is about highlighting black separatism, black is beautiful, and, and, and creating a completely distinct pageant. And that to them feels highly antithetical and a real betrayal. I think the thing that is so upsetting to many in the NAACP is it appears to be to them a separatist pageant, that it is about highlighting black separatism, black is beautiful, and, and creating a completely distinct pageant. And she becomes, when Vanessa Williams is forced to resign, she becomes Miss America. Right. And to remind people, 10 months into her reign, Penthouse publishes nude photos of Vanessa Williams, and they had been taken years earlier, published without her consent. They were rushed to print to cash in on her being Miss America. And the pageant at the time does not defend her. They go on just a few years ago to give a public apology. But at the time, this whole thing devours her. And I'm curious what you think, what does that moment reveal about this larger story that you're telling? Immediately, it suggests how tenuous that power claimed through that moment of integrating the pageant can be, and how quick. One really has to wonder, if it were not, the first Black Miss America who was confronting this situation, would the pageant have been so quick to fully reject her? I was around five or six years old when this happened. But I distinctly remember, and it only comes from me meditating on it from reading this, that after that happened with Vanessa Williams, I remember thinking I felt so sorry for her. I felt so scared. But I also remember feeling like, oh, I have to be excellent. Mm-hmm. I can't have, I can't make any mistakes in this lifetime. It wasn't a conscious thought. It was just a feeling of understanding that, oh, like, things can turn very quickly. A mistake can ruin your life. That's just a side note. No, and it, but it, that, and isn't that sort of, isn't that in some ways the whole horrific point, right? That this, this is a moment of disciplining everyone to understand. Um, that, yeah, you can't, you can't make one wrong move. Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is historian Mickey McElyea. We're talking about her new book, Liberation Summer, the real story of the 1968 Miss America protest and how the myth of the bra burners came to define and distort the women's movement for more than half a century. We'll be back after a break. This is Fresh Air. Today, I am talking with Mickey McElyea, historian and author of Liberation Summer, the moment that changed the women's movement and the future of American politics. Okay. I want to go back one last time to that boardwalk in 1968 to the third group of women, which we have been sort of talking about throughout the hour. And they showed up at the barricades with their own signs. Miss America is still our ideal. And one was a former Miss Green Bay, wearing a Nixon badge. Can you briefly tell me about this small contingent of women? And why does your book take them so seriously at the time? Because they weren't talked about as much as they were talked about the protesters themselves, the activists. Yeah. Partially, I think it's important to think about just what compels these young women to go out there and challenge the women's liberationists, right? They want to speak back. They make their own signs. And one of them, the one who is wearing the Nixon for President button while she does this is Terry Ann Mewson, who will go on herself later to be a Miss America in the early 1970s, will visit the Nixon White House and actually be very representative in Republican politics later in the 1970s. Partially, what drives them to go out there is they feel, attacked as individual women. They feel attacked by women's liberationists who are challenging their femininity, their right to be women in the way that they want to be women. It's something that resonates significantly with the kind of discourses of grievance that so much drive our politics today. What is also crucial is that Mewson will go on to be one of the leading faces of the Christian broadcast network. She is a very, very visible in the religious right and very visible in evangelical politics. But also, it's that moment of reaction that is a part of this beauty politics that develops. I think it's very important to think of Donald Trump as just as much a product of this politics as the various women, particularly the women who are in his cabinet, right? That this is a political formation that is driving American politics, not just the place of women in it. And this isn't just circumstantial, that this is a historical development that had started in 1968 and is very much ongoing. And that we're seeing sort of, I mean, it's kind of, it's fascinating to me. It's fascinating to watch the movements of these things. And I wonder, I think we may be seeing a new age of prominence for the Miss America pageant. That's interesting, because, I mean, Gretchen Carlson, who went on to then run the Miss America pageant herself, I felt like she might be the entire book in a single life because she, Miss America, she was Miss America in 1989. She was, you know, she was the first woman to run the Miss America pageant. She was the first woman to run the Miss America pageant. She was mocked for her looks back then, seen as kind of the intellectual Miss America because she had gone to Stanford. Then she became a Fox News cultural warrior. She opposed the term feminism for years. She sues Roger Ailes for sexual harassment. Help sparks me too. And then ends up running the Miss America pageant herself. I'm wondering when you say that you see a resurgence of it, you know, it doesn't even run the Miss America pageant. on television anymore. It has such a smaller audience. So what gives you the indication that there may be a resurgence? I mean, one of the things that I think is fascinating is this September 6th, the next Miss America will be crowned in West Palm Beach, Florida. Not Atlanta City. It will be crowned at a convention center that is less than six miles away from Mar-a-Lago. So the move by the Miss America pageant organization to go there, and to go there with the help of other major fundraisers, highlights the ways in which, you know, that they are leaning in to the politics of beauty and power that we see. But if you want to watch live the crowning this year, you have to get a live stream from a subscription service that is dedicated. Just to pageants. But as we see the consolidation of media, as we look at what happened with Paramount, as we think about what network television looks like in this particular moment, and what it might look like, I wouldn't be surprised to see the pageant make its way back. Mickey McElyea, thank you so much for your scholarship and for this book. Thank you so much for having me. Mickey McElyea's new book is Liberated. Liberation Summer, the moment that changed the women's movement and the future of American politics. After a short break, TV critic David Bianculli reviews Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, a new Big Bang Theory spinoff series on HBO Max. This is Fresh Air. The Big Bang Theory, the CBS sitcom about a gang of lovable nerds, ended in 2019 after a 12-year run. But it's lived on thanks to a successful pair of prequels, Young Sheldon, which looks at one character's childhood, lasted seven seasons on CBS. And a spinoff of that sitcom, George and Mandy's First Marriage, is still running after two years on the same network. And now, HBO Max presents a new Big Bang spinoff. But it's a sequel, not a prequel. It's called Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. And our TV critic David Bianculli thinks it's terrific. Here's his review. The creators of the Big Bang Theory have teamed with Zach Penn, a writer on the Avengers movie, to concoct a new 10-part HBO Max series, which continues to follow a quartet of characters from that long-running sitcom. Not the main characters, such as Sheldon and Leonard, but some of the peripheral ones. Specifically, Stuart, who ran the local comic book store, Denise, who became Stuart's girlfriend in the final season of the Big Bang Theory, and two awkward brainy misfits, Bert, the large, lunky geologist, and Barry Kripke, a scientist with an oversized ego and a pronounced speech impediment. These are supporting characters, but the Big Bang Theory always did great by its supporting characters and cast, giving them more prominence and substance as years went by. And now, these four Big Bang supporting characters are thrown into a whole new universe. Literally. Stuart Fails to Save the Universe has no laugh track, but it's relentlessly, inventively funny. Co-creator Zach Penn also co-wrote Free Guy, the Ryan Reynolds movie about a background player in a video game who steps into the narrative spotlight, and this new series is a lot like that and just as playful. Many, if not most, comic book movies and TV shows these days are dark and brooding, but not this one. Here's how it starts. The setting is a post-apocalyptic Pasadena. Stewart, played by Kevin Sussman, is still trying to run his comic book store, which is funny right there. Burt, played by Brian Posehn, is about to purchase a rare comic book, bartering for it with canned vegetables and cat food, when another Stewart from another universe shows up out of nowhere to give himself some news. Leonard Hofstadter, Sheldon Cooper, Howard Wolowitz. Remember them? Yeah, real nerds. Hot kettle. Sure. Fair enough. Anyway, they invented some kind of quantum entanglement thing, and you know what? You were there when it malfunctioned. Both of us are just him. Doesn't matter. It matters to me. The point is, it altered reality. None of this is supposed to be. And by none of this, you mean. None of it! The alternate Stewart gives the comic store Stewart a universe-traversing device and a quest to save the universe as we know it, or as he knew it. The comic store Stewart sets off with his friends to do just that, but spoiler alert, it doesn't go well. Actually, that's not much of a spoiler, since the title of the show is Stewart Fails to Save the Universe. The first new world they visit, in fact, may be worse. Stewart, Bert, and Denise, played by Lauren Lapkus, have been captured by an evil overlord and summoned before him. When they're taken to him, they realize he's Barry Kripke, played by John Ross Bowie, who somehow is in charge. Stewart summons the nerve to ask how. With all due respect, my liege, how is it that you're the grand. Cow-eef. Caliph of South Pasadena? I suppose we have time for a little backstory. I apologize, you guys have heard this before. When everything went screwy and civilization as we know it collapsed, a vacuum of leadership was created here at the university, and as we all know. Nature abhors a vacuum? Why, no. So, I seized power, got all the food, the guns, and the girls, Yeah, end of backstory. The writers and directors of Stewart Fails to Save the Universe take an anything-goes approach that works beautifully. Every opening credit sequence is different, and even includes its own spoilers. The theme music is by Danny Elfman, and every episode visits a new multiverse. One is devoid of greed or possessiveness, while in another, my favorite, the people have cow-like digestive systems, go to restaurants to eat grass, and swallow their own cud. I dare you to tell me you've seen that on TV before. Many of these alternate universes are populated by familiar faces from the Big Bang Theory, and even from Laurie's Two and a Half Men. The producers have asked the critics reveal no names, but everyone who pops up in these ten episodes is a delight, like a hidden Easter egg come to life. And some appear as more than one alternate character. What could be more enjoyable? How about this? Other actors and celebrities show up, too, presumably recognizing this for the giddy adventure it is. Stewart Fails to Save the Universe ends with an ingeniously concocted finale. But even so, in this or some other universe, HBO Max ought to keep it going. David Bianculli reviewed Stewart Fails to Save the Universe, now streaming on HBO Max. The hit series Hacks broke the record for the most Emmy nominations for a comedy in a single year with its fifth and final season. Next time on Fresh Air, Jean Smart talks about the evolution of her character, Deborah Vance, from a power-hungry, fame-chasing comedian to a woman finally finding peace inside herself. Smart also talks about her direct connection to the Salem witch trials. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. You can also watch some of our interviews on our YouTube page, This Is Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our senior producer today is Roberta Chirac. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldenado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez-Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Teresa Madden directed today's show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley. This Is Fresh Air