This Day in Feminist History (Protest Against Miss America Pageant)

September 7, 1968—In 1968, protest was as American as apple pie—even as American as the Miss America Pageant, which found itself picketed by more than 100 feminists who accused it of exploiting women. The demonstration increased the visibility of the growing women's liberation movement, but its success in meeting its goal—decreasing society's emphasis on beauty—was decidedly mixed.

Some of my male readers have expressed deep satisfaction upon even the remotest hint of feminine pulchritude on this blog. In particular, one of these readers, if he ever chooses to run for public office, will undoubtedly become known as "The Great Objectifier" because of such predilections. (Some of us have taken to calling him "Igor" because of the hump he appears to be developing whenever a comely young female induces involuntary whiplash.)

Well, taking into account this readership, we (that's Victorian lingo for "I," of course) have decided to focus on this rather lighter side of history. (Don't worry—we'll do grim again tomorrow, sort of like that lyric from “Comedy Tonight”—“She does Medea later this week!”)

But in keeping with the sadistic tendencies of the CEO of this blog, we will NOT include photos from that Miss America Pageant. No Swimsuit contests, no Miss Congeniality Contests—not even photos of the protestors, if you can believe that. Weep and wail to no avail. We're running a puritanical and politically correct blog here!

Similarities Between the First and Second Stages of the Women’s Movements

I have already remarked in this blog on how the first American women's movement, which sprang into existence at Seneca Falls, N.Y., arose at least partly out of frustration with the founders' experiences with sexism experienced in the abolitionist and temperance movements.

Now, to be sure, the male chauvinism critiqued in the mainstream, more conservative elements of American society, as critiqued in Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, bothered the 1960s feminists the most.

But, as they became involved in the 1960s counterparts of the abolitionist and temperance movements—the civil-rights and anti-war protests—it did not escape their notice that many leaders of these groups were decidedly retrograde in how they viewed women.

Women who journeyed south for the "Freedom Summer" voter-registration project thought they would be using their organizational skills among the disenfranchised, desperately poor African-Americans, but many were chagrined to discover that a certain element of the male leadership thought those skills could be better used in the kitchen, where they could cook.

Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael touched a particular nerve, when asked about the position of women volunteers in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), by offering the thoughtless response: "the only position for women in SNCC is prone."

Origins of the Protest

One of the offshoots of this confluence of New Left groups was New York Radical Women (N.Y.R.W.) And so, when you read the press release listing who was invited to this first media event of the feminist movement (which, incidentally, happened to be the brainchild of Carol Hanisch, who also helped popularize the feminist rallying cry "The Personal Is Political"), it sounds like a roll call of the type of organizations being infiltrated by the F.B.I. during those years: "Women's Liberation Groups, black women, high-school and college women, women's peace groups, women's welfare and social-work groups, women's job-equality groups, pro-birth control and pro-abortion groups."

At a distance, 40 years later, one is likely to smile at some of the 60s lingo used in feminist leader Robin Morgan's press release (the contest was an "auction-block," with undertones of slavery; it promised to be "a groovy day," protesting on the boardwalk; and would you believe that female cops in the city couldn't make arrests—"dig that!"). (That press release also anticipated David Letterman with its top 10 list of items they were protesting. It took more than a decade before the pageant got around to rectifying one of these complaints—the lack of an African-American winner.)

You could also see how certain male-chauvinist editors might have rolled their eyes at the tactics coming into vogue right around then that the feminists promised in the press release to use: picket lines, guerrilla theater, and leafleting.

But one item in particular touched off a controversy, and gave an enduringly pejorative stereotype for the movement: the "Freedom Trash Can," into which protestors dumped bras, girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, wigs, women's magazines peddling anything that smacked of the beauty culture.

The Web site for the National Organization for Women (many of whose members were involved in the protest) notes that "the myth of the bra burners" originated from that trash can. NOW is certainly correct that no undergarments were actually lit up that day. But the idea had certainly crossed the protest organizers' minds before it was pointed out to them there was an Atlantic City ordinance against burning anything on the Boardwalk. It would appear that the burning of bras was a mere outgrowth of the burning of draft cards and American flags.

So literally, nothing happened to the bras. But symbolically, the same rejectionist impulse that turned on draft cards and the flag operated here, as well.

So, while Bert Parks was inside rehearsing his 50 smiling, apple-cheeked contestants, outside he was being burned in effigy. When the big night came—the moment that hundreds of thousands of overweight, follicularly challenged American males had been awaiting for a whole year!—their enjoyment was disrupted by protestors who'd managed to get into the filming. Parks' poise must surely have been disrupted as he awaited the moment that the 47-year-old pageant looked forward to, when he sang, "There She Is."

(If you want my opinion, Bert looked much more cheerful than he ever did on the show in one of his final appearances: his sombrero-wearing self-parody singing "Tequila" in the Marlon Brando-Matthew Broderick comedy about The Mob, The Freshman).

Protest Post-Mortem

After all was said and done, how much did the protest accomplish? Well, Miss America has suffered long-term decline, it is true—including reality show histrionics back in 2001. But I ascribe that more to the curse that Bert Parks laid on them after his unceremonious termination than upon changes in society wrought by the feminists.

One focus of feminist ire, Playboy, has certainly taken its licks over the years. But that is due less to feminist protest than to the magazine's tardy response to the changing media landscape. (It is also ironic that, though Hugh Hefner has taken it on the chin from much of the leadership of the feminist movement, he, like they, is resolutely pro-choice.) Nowadays, the laddie-magazine format pioneered in Great Britain, along with the Internet, have spread the worship of the female body into every corner of the globe.

In fact, the very serious critique that the protest organizers offered of the beauty industry in all its forms has largely fallen on deaf ears. Sure, nearly 20 years ago a post-movement feminist, Naomi Wolf, came out with The Beauty Myth, but judging from the number of people watching reality shows about models, I’d day its impact has been nil, wouldn’t you?

For all of that, it would be unfair of me to imply that the Miss America protest did not have serious repercussions. It did—just not quite in the area where it originally expected.

A week or two ago, while channel-surfing C-Span, I came across a bookstore appearance by author Judith Nies (The Girl I Left Behind: A Narrative History of the Sixties). She noted one lasting legacy of the event—because the protestors would only talk to female reporters, editors had to reassign women on food and other beats, as well as female photographers, in order to ensure coverage. They even managed to break through the glass ceiling at the good, gray New York Times, because of such a reassigned reporter: Charlotte Curtis.