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When the 2018 Miss America Contest ends Sunday night, it will be the first time in nearly a century that it will take place without a swimsuit sleeve. Although the players in today's world may disagree on the merits of change, it has been a long time.
Fifty years ago, on September 7, 1968, a group of women descended from New York City in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to protest Miss America. By doubling the swimsuit contest, a "cattle auction", this "group of angry ladies," as TIME called it at the time, took the walk.
But the protesters, organized by the New York Radical Women group, did not only call for the end of the swimsuit contest, or even the abolition of the series in general. They grabbed Miss America as an example of a larger problem: the celebration of women who meet limited standards of beauty and who fulfill limited roles in society. The protesters had actively participated in the civil rights and anti-war movements; their 10-point manifesto also criticized the contest for supporting the Vietnam War, sending the winners of the Miss America demonstration to rally the troops and its lack of racial diversity. .
Half a century later, six women who were there told TIME about what their protest had done and had not done – and what it meant for the future activism for women's rights.
On the decision to protest Miss America
Carol Hanisch, then 26: At a meeting of radical women in New York in August, we were watching an art film, Schmeerguntz, who had clips of beauty contest competitors. I am an Iowa girl who grew up with a family who watched with great interest the Miss America show. The whole family was gathering around the board and choosing a favorite, so when I was a teenager, I thought these women were fantastic and beautiful and that was what I was supposed to be. But even though we spent a lot of money and time trying, none of us have ever felt comfortable and we certainly have not been comfortable in the clothes we had to wear – these supports bra of the heels that killed our feet and our backs. As I watched [the film]I realized that Miss America's competition would be a great way to get women's liberation into the public consciousness.
Kathie Amatniek, known as "Sarachild", then 25 years old: There was an idea that women were already released, that we had won the vote and that was all. We were told that the pay gap was due to the fact that we were not qualified or not interested in it. Well, when I was part of Freedom Summer in Mississippi, SNCC [the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] taught us that the best thing for the movement to do is educate whites [how] They are also oppressed in the United States, which is not as democratic as it claims in many ways. So I felt that I was on a mission from the civil rights movement.
Robin Morgan, then 27 years old: I left the Yippie Management Committee for the [protests] at the National Democratic Convention of Chicago to organize this event of competition and [the Yippies] thought I was crazy, that the revolution was going to start in Chicago. I said that I would rather organize Atlantic City, because the other was essentially defined by men and that women did not really have a voice. It was beginning to understand that "the left" was, in its own way, as sexist as the right. And it was a blow.
Alix Kates Shulman, then 36: For me, this particular demonstration was personal. I felt very attached to the oppression of the standards of beauty, having graduated from high school in the suburbs of Cleveland in the 1950s, when you all must be like you, and that's what I fled. I moved to New York to go to the graduate school and I got a really good job as an encyclopedia editor – but when I got pregnant, I had to go to school. I had to leave my job. In 1967, I heard about New York Radical Women on Alternative Radio and [the group] has become the most important thing in my life. I was welcomed as a stay-at-home mom, as a representative of the people that this revolution was supposed to release.
Hanisch: We did not oppose competitors; we opposed competitions against women in beauty pageants.
The big day
Morgan: More people came to [our meeting point] Union Square we never dreamed, so I had to go get a phone book to call more bus. Charlotte Curtis in New York Time came with us on the bus, elegantly dressed. We decided to invite only women journalists. It was not because we thought we were going to have a better break; we were not so naive. We wanted to give them news to cover because at the time, women were only assigned to flower shows, fashion shows or company pages.
Bev Grant, then 26 years old: I wrote parodic songs that we sang while we were traveling on the bus. One was "Is not She Sweet": Is not she sweet / Making profits on her meat / She sells beauty products, so she plugs them in / [Editor’s note: Grant also photographed the event; some of her work is seen here.]
Hanisch: I remember that it was a beautiful day, bright and sunny, and not too hot. We threw objects depicting the oppression of women and the torture of women in a Liberté garbage can, as Playboy, Esquire, dishwashing detergent, floor wax, curlers, eyeliner, mascara, false eyelashes. We did not burn bras, it was a myth. We had a permit in advance and we were told absolutely no burn. But we fell in high heels to enter the convention hall, so no one identified us with the picket line.
Shulman: I bought the tickets for the pageant so that we could take the first row of the balcony to drop the banner "Liberation of Women". My husband and I had a common checking account. It was really his money, and I never used the money for my own purposes without discussing it with him, but I did it for it. And I felt happy and proud. But he was not against the protest. In fact, he drove a few of us driving to Atlantic City. On the promenade, people behind the barricades called us [names like] dirty commie, jew, queer, lesbian, ugly, fucking, slut. Fortunately, many of the women who came to see came to our side of the barricade and walked with us.
Sarachild: At first I was terrified of being arrested and not being able to access my new job Monday as an apprentice filmmaker. But civil rights activists took this risk for freedom, which even gave me the courage to volunteer to protest inside the Atlantic City convention hall.
Peggy Dobbins, then 29: My husband worked in urban planning and he made the puppet [of Miss America], and we probably have the springs for the breasts of his toolbox. The chains [around her waist] were very important, to show that women were sold, that we were puppets of companies like Toni Home Permanent. My mother was holding my head in the sink and pouring the stinking fluid over my head, that's what I had thrown into the Freedom bin and that's what led us up and down the aisles. [of the convention hall] squirt it under the seats of the people sitting at the show, to show that the sale of Miss America has been ranting. A security guy caught me, like a bear hug from behind. And then the next thing I remember is watching the end of the Miss America contest in jail. I've been accused of messy driving for having emitted a "harmful odor".
Morgan: Charlotte Curtis quietly bailed out women who had been arrested inside the arena.
On the impact of the protest
Hanisch: If you did not grow up at that time, I'm sure it's very hard to imagine that women were not complaining publicly about their fate. I think that's why the protest attracted such attention. It was shocking that women were saying these things. I think we had an effect on the fashion industry. Women's bras until then had been very, very uncomfortable, stiff and irritating, and a few years later we had softer bras that were much more comfortable. We are the grandmothers of the #MeToo movement. We did it in person and they do it mostly online. It took 50 years [for Miss America] abandon the swimsuit competition, which was largely a cattle auction.
Sarachild: Even though we did not burn bras, the bra epithet caught people's attention. Women wrote to us from all over the country saying I have been waiting all my life for you.
Dobbins: Sometimes I feel ashamed and uncomfortable that we have legitimized a world in which many women work alone 60 hours a week and work two or three times.
Sarachild: You hear a lot of [Miss America] the competitors say [they compete] to get scholarships, but we should not even need scholarships if we had free tuition. Up & # 39; to [elimination of] swimsuit competition, women were only judged on their looks, now they are mainly judged on their looks.
On the standards of beauty and lessons for today
Shulman: The heels are twice as high as the ones we dumped in the Freedom bin. We opposed having to shave our legs, and now you have to shave pubic areas. I can not say that these standards have disappeared at all. No, in a way, it's a lot worse. This is not to say that our movement did not have a huge effect. We have raised issues that can no longer be considered acquired.
Dobbins: I live in downtown Atlanta, in front of a large office building, and I did not expect to see women going to work in the morning in stilettos. I mean you do not have to wear that, but apparently you do it.
Hanisch: One thing that makes me angry is the [exaggerated] reports that 400 women came and protested. It was probably between 100 and 150 of us. It's only a small group of people who have done that, and I think it's important for women to know that you do not need a large group to make an impact.
Morgan: We had phone trees, each called five people, and the phone bills were obscene. Internet has facilitated communication in general, but it also means that it is easier to spit venom.
Dobbins: I love social media. I am almost 80 years old. I'm not very fit and I can not go out on the street. But I also think that if we had realized how different we were in terms of strength and diversity, if we had welcomed that, we might still have separated and we started different things, both of 39; others.
Grant: It's time for you to do it together. We are here and we can give advice, but you will have to lead it. Maybe what we did in Miss America was a bit of an exaggeration, but that's how things evolve. Things are not going well. There is always this jerk in one direction, and a jerk a little, then you jerk forward and you jerk back. That's how change happens.
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