Miss America 2019: swimsuits disappeared from the contest, but the relationship was still complicated

The new president of Miss America, Gretchen Carlson, the former host of Fox News and Miss America in 1989, announced the change in June, in an effort to reorganize the #MeToo era event.

But this decision has sparked controversy among those who say that part of the swimsuit is a legendary tradition, while critics say for decades that the event is a primary symbol of women's objectification.

[Stripped of bikinis, Miss America teeters on. For now, anyway.]

Since the beginning of the contest in 1921, the swimsuit competition and the contest as a whole have been a controversial event. The first contest was launched by Atlantic City hoteliers who wanted to extend the lucrative summer season after Labor Day.

Little Margaret Gorman, 15, of the district, won the first Miss America Award, and the newspapers touted her long braids at a time when modern women were swaying, according to Kimberly H. Hamlin's essay: Miss America Pageants, 1921-1927.

"From the descriptions of its appearance and its small size, it is obvious that the judges were not interested in celebrating the new emancipated women of the 1920s, but to promote the images of the girls' daughters." yesterday: small, childish, enslaved and malleable, "writes Hamlin. .

Yet the pageant has allowed Gorman and two other competitors to reduce their lows below the knee.

According to Hamlin, women bathing on the beaches of Atlantic City had to wear stockings to avoid any exposure of bare skin. In addition, the new swimsuits "Annette Kellerman", named in honor of a famous swimmer who ushered in a more fitted suit than that of bloomers and loose outfits at the time, have also been banned.

[It’s not just about bikinis: Inside the battle for the future of Miss America]

Gorman's outfit was considered "pretty risky at the time," Hamlin said in a phone interview. A few days before Gorman was photographed with her stockings turned up, Louise Rosine, a 39-year-old novelist from Los Angeles, was jailed in Atlantic City for appearing on the beach in the same way. In a New York Times article titled "Bather Goes to Prison: Keeping Her Legs Naked," Rosine said, "The city is not allowed to tell me how I will wear my stockings. This is not their business.

Margaret Gorman poses after winning the first Miss America contest in Atlantic City in September 1921. (AP)

The 1921 contest was a huge success and became a model for all upcoming beauty pageants. He set the precedent of the competitors parading in swimsuit, which was the dramatic core of the contest. And it also created a tension between crowning an idealized model of healthy American femininity while allowing a certain dose of titillation to please the crowd.

During the 1920s, the first historical reenactments sought to stay safe from commercialism by offering a small reward to the winners. The women were supposed to take their crowns, go home, get married and not use the title as a commercial success.

But that changed when Fay Lanphier was crowned Miss America in 1925. Lanphier was the first Miss America of the West, the first to make a Hollywood film and the first to financially benefit from the title, earning $ 50,000 for a personal tour of 16 weeks. , Writes Hamlin, a huge amount for the 1920s.

In 1927, complaints about the growing commercialism of Miss America culminated with groups such as the League of Women Voters and the Federation of Ecclesiastical Women of Atlantic County to protest the lack of morality and the test from Hamlin.

In 1928, Atlantic City officials temporarily suspended the contest, giving in to the protests.

In 1935, Lenora Slaughter, executive secretary of the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce in Florida, took over. The swimsuit party continued to be the heart of the contest but Slaughter reformed the peekaboo event from the resort town to the modern miss America we know today.

At the height of the Great Depression, Slaughter encouraged Miss Americas to sign contracts in Hollywood and take advantage of their titles, while continuing to maintain rules to preserve an idealized image of American femininity. She established familiar tropes of the competition, for example by wearing heels with swimsuits as competitors walked across the stage.

In 1945, the Miss America organization offered its first scholarships, with Bess Myerson, the first Jewish contestant, to receive $ 5,000 for her studies.

Hilary Levey Friedman, a sociologist and expert on beauty pageants at Brown University, said the contest had raised the question: what do you want to do to win?

"The Miss America organization says it's about scholarships," said Friedman Levey. "Having to walk in a bikini and six-inch heels to get that is problematic."

"Wearing a high-heeled jersey is nonsense," Hamlin said. "Are we supposed to do something in swimsuits or just look good?

Miss America 1946 Marilyn Buferd crowns the new 1947 Miss America, Barbara Jo Walker, of Memphis. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

The next bustle swimsuit was at the 1947 contest, when competitors wore two-piece swimsuits for the first time.

During the Second World War, women gained independence and empowerment by occupying jobs left by GIs. But once the GIs came back, the social constraints on women's independence did the same, and public opinion was that the two-part suits went too far.

In 1949, barely two years after the two-piece scandal, the contestants returned to wearing one-piece suits. And for the first time, the winner was crowned in an evening dress instead of a swimsuit. While Myerson was joking, Miss America's leader, Slaughter, "picked up the contest by her swimsuit straps and put her in an evening gown."

Yet the controversy over swimsuits continued. Miss America 1951, Yolande Betbeze, refused to make her official appearances in swimsuit. Trained in a convent and trained as a soprano, Betzbe said, "I am a singer, not a pin-up."

Fifty of the 54 Miss America 1950 candidates met in Atlantic City in September 1950. (Sam Myers / AP)

Catalina's swimsuit, sponsor of Pageant, was so shocked by Betzbe's act of rebellion that he split from Miss America and started the Miss USA contest, which was later bought by Donald Trump .

Levey Friedman, a professor at Brown University, is in favor of competitions in general since she is no stranger to them: her mother, Pam Eldred-Robbins, was Miss America 1970. Friedman gave a lecture to Brown on beauty pageants.

"I do not want to disagree with my daughter," Eldred-Robbins said in a phone interview. "But I felt confident wearing a bikini and heels and I did not have a problem with that. It's part of your act. Eldred-Robbins was a ballet dancer at the time and was used to playing in public in a leotard.

"In real life, you would not normally wear a high-heeled swimsuit, but if you're an opera singer, you would not wear your costume either," she said.

Eldred-Robbins earned $ 10,000 for her education, which was "a huge sum in 1970," she said, and helped her get an undergraduate degree at the university. from Detroit Mercy.

That year, she won the swimsuit contest, just two years after the famous feminist groups' protests against the contest. She stated that she had faced many protests during her appearances at Miss America during the year 1970. "It was intimidating for me. I was only 21 years old and I had never experienced anything like it, "she said.

Hamlin said the 1968 demonstration had expressed growing social tensions that contest organizers had wanted to downplay. "The protesters pointed out that it was a masquerade that it was a scholarship contest," Hamlin said. Even with money, "it's always about objectifying women."

But Eldred-Robbins was in agreement with the goals of feminists. "We were all after the same things," she said. Education, a career and financial independence "were things that I also wanted," she added. "We just went around in different ways."

"I am disappointed that they won the swimsuit competition this year," she said. "People do not look to see who the Rhodes Scholar is. They connect for the show.

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