Feminists Protested Miss America as a ‘Cattle Auction’ 50 Years Ago

History ^ | 6/8/2018 | Becky Little

[otness_e]

This week, the Miss America Organization announced that it’s eliminating the swimsuit competition in an effort to focus less on women’s appearances. It’s not clear what, exactly, the beauty pageant will be about now that it’s trying to deemphasize the “beauty” part. In any case, the decision coincides with the 50th anniversary of a feminist protest that criticized the contest as a sexist “cattle auction.”

The Miss America pageant has courted controversy ever since it began as a 1921 newspaper “bathing beauties” contest and marketing scheme for Atlantic City, New Jersey. In the beginning, the controversy stemmed from conservative critics who thought that women should cover their bodies when they appeared in public.

“Early on, people are critical of this contest because it was not really seen as an acceptable thing to have women stand around in swimsuits and be judged,” says Blain Roberts, a history professor at Fresno State University and author of Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women: Race and Beauty in the Twentieth-Century South.

To counter the perception that the contest was just about “bathing beauties,” it added a talent competition in the 1930s and started awarding scholarships to finalists after World War II. Despite this, the point of the pageant was still to crown one woman as the most beautiful. Critics continued to take issue with the pageant into the 1960s. But by that point, the criticism wasn’t coming from conservatives worried about women’s propriety anymore—it was coming from liberal, second-wave feminists who considered the contest demeaning.

[otness_e]

I find her detestable for taking away that opportunity especially considering it comes across as spiteful jealousy. However, she’s more symptomatic of the overall problem rather than the direct cause of it. Like I said, Robin Morgan alongside the Frankfurt School may have far more direct responsibility to the rot that Miss America experienced.

[Mears]

It was a much coveted “cattle auction”————and VOLUNTARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

.

[oldasrocks]

Not so good for cows at a 4H auction as the next destination is the slaughter house for hanging weights.

I still notice no feminists complaining about the muzzies snipping some women parts off.

[Architect of Avalon]

Ugly women hate beautiful women.

[otness_e]

Yeah, I’ve noticed. I guess that also explains why the Disney 1991 animated version of Beauty and the Beast for some reason had the blonde triplets who fawned over Gaston look like they each outranked Belle in terms of outer beauty individually (let alone as a group) despite the fact that Belle was supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the village going by the narrative (that and also not coming across as having any actual inner ugliness while Belle... well, let’s just say her behavior is REALLY unbefitting of a “true beauty from within” protagonist.). After all, the one who wrote that movie, Linda Woolverton was a feminist (and if you ask me was far more radical of a feminist than even Emma Watson, considering that the 2017 remake didn’t try to demonize marriage or, for that matter, pretty much bashed men at all). Heck, forget feminist, Woolverton was an up and out feminazi.