Being Miss America: Behind the Rhinestone Curtain (Discovering America) (9 page)

Over the years, plenty of men involved with the pageant in some capacity or other have been called (or enjoyed calling themselves) “Mr. Miss America.” Of all of them, though, the most persuasive case can be made for Parks. His stamp on the pageant was indelible; he became synonymous with its identity. He was a true song-and-dance man, but also a witty and charming host. In contrast to later years, when gimmicks and reality TV “twists” frequently left the contestants high and dry—or worse, made them the butt of the joke—Parks treated them with tremendous respect. When they surprised or charmed him and the viewing audience, he enthusiastically laughed
with
them, but was not prone to laughing
at
them. And his most lasting legacy, of course, was his annual performance of the pageant’s signature anthem “There She Is, Miss America” as the brand-new win
ner glided tearily down the Convention Hall runway. In the years since Parks’s tenure ended in 1980, the song has been performed by everyone from Regis and Kathie Lee to Tony Danza to Gary Collins to Clay Aiken to, one year, the outgoing Miss America herself. No matter how many have tried it, though, the pageant’s most devoted fans always seem to be far more satisfied when a host introduces Parks’s original recording. It’s not just the voice, of course; it’s that he is emblematic of the pageant’s most wildly successful era—an ephemeral moment in which pretty much everyone agreed who Miss America was, and thought that the whole enterprise was pretty cool.

The nostalgia for those early years, especially among longtime fans and viewers, is probably inevitable. It does not, however, necessarily reflect Parks’s entire term as emcee. The telecasts of the 1970s, especially as the decade went on, tell the last ten years of his story—more on that later. For Miss America, as for most true, traditional American institutions, the harbingers of turmoil started to stir in the early 1960s.

Today’s global culture is so interconnected through technology and twenty-four-hour news that it often seems as if we face more challenges than ever before in the world’s history. In reality, it’s pretty likely that we just
know about
more of them. Who knows what the sixties would have looked like if its citizens had had access to today’s volume of information? Even without that, though, it’s almost impossible to believe that over the course of a single decade, Jack Kennedy was both elected and killed (and then followed to the grave by his brother Bobby), Martin Luther King and Malcolm X rose to prominence and were assassinated, the Black Panthers ascended, the Vietnam War sent a generation into battle, riots broke out at Stonewall, chaos overwhelmed Woodstock, and the American flag was planted on the moon.

Although Don McLean’s 1971 song “American Pie” me
morializes February 3, 1959—when a plane crash killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper—as “The Day the Music Died,” the phrase could just as easily be applied to many of the events of the 1960s. On the thirtieth anniversary of the crash, writer Claire Suddath examined the extensive reach and resonance of that very specific piece of music, which “turned the plane crash into a metaphor for the moment when the United States lost its last shred of innocence. McLean envisioned that last Buddy Holly concert in Clear Lake, Iowa: teenagers in pink carnations and pick-up trucks, dancing and falling in love and dancing some more. The snow fell silently outside as the country teetered on the brink of the 1960s; no one in the ballroom had any idea what would happen next.”

The death of American innocence in the 1960s has filled volumes of prose, reams of poetry, miles of film, and no small amount of vinyl. The chaos and rebellion that would consume the nation, as its heart was broken over and over again, clearly manifested in a multitude of ways. Unlike their parents, often referred to as “the Greatest Generation” because of their unwavering patriotism and self-sacrifice during the Second World War, this crop of young Americans was divided. Some clung to tradition, believing that the unrest was a passing fad. But many more revolted. Against a government that was sending them to die, against social mores they felt were unjust and discriminatory, against institutions that expected them to sit down, be quiet, and conform. In other words, against almost every thing that Miss America represented. Miss America belonged to Camelot, and Camelot was dead.

As starry-eyed belles dreamed of the crown, fire hoses and police dogs were turned loose on civil rights protesters. Miss Alabama hopefuls in white ball gowns glided across the stages of their state while Rosa Parks marched from Selma to Montgomery. The best and brightest of Illinois focused on the Convention Hall runway, while protesters ri
oted at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. Sure, the pageant still aired in millions of homes, and ratings continued to rise; undoubtedly, it served as a security blanket for those we were hoping against hope that everybody would just calm down. But hindsight illuminates precisely how Miss America, as an institution, quickly began to seem remarkably tone deaf.

And of course, there was one more big headache for the pageant during this unstable time: emerging from the chaos were women named Friedan and Steinem and Morgan, the second wave of feminism, the National Organization for Women, and a mutiny against existing gender roles. This new type of feminist ferociously rejected the emphasis on physical beauty, demureness, and the traditional concept of a woman’s “proper place.” The second-wave agenda emphasized autonomy, activism, education, and intelligence. Through this lens, even the most basic, careless customs of the pageant—like routinely and universally referring to the contestants as “girls”—appeared to be not only old-fashioned but also a lightning rod for outrage. Within a few short years, the new feminism would take aim squarely at Miss America.

It came to a head in September of 1968. Credited by many as the first major American feminist protest, it remains one of the least accurately reported. Over the years, it has come to be known as a bra-burning mob extravaganza, which at least has some basis in truth. Organizer Robin Morgan, on behalf of New York Radical Women, drafted a press release proclaiming simply “NO MORE MISS AMERICA!” She invited “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—women of every political persuasion” to protest “the image of Miss America, an image that
oppresses women in every area in which it purports to represent us.”

When Morgan and her group reached Atlantic City, they found that the crowd waiting there for them far outnumbered expectations. Although history remembers them as bra burners, there was actually no fire on the Boardwalk that night. The protest, instead, took aim at the “degrading mindless-boob-girlie symbol.” Coverage of the event, staged as it was outside one of the biggest television broadcasts of the year, was significant. Most reports position it as the breakthrough moment of the women’s movement, when the rising tensions coalesced, found a target, and went soaring past the tipping point into the public consciousness.

For the most part—aside from some biting words from Bert Parks—the pageant ignored the protesters, focusing instead on Miss Illinois, Judi Ford, the bubbly blonde trampolinist who won the crown that night to become Miss America 1969. It was predictable, in many ways, that the pageant’s leaders would decline to engage the opposing viewpoint. Especially on their own turf. But the visual was insurmountable. A new type of woman was outside, raging against the machine; a traditional type of woman was inside, blithely competing in swimsuit, talent, and evening gown. Whether there were closet feminist sympathizers among that year’s Miss America contestants or not, September 7, 1968, represented a visible split between the old and the new—one that would inexorably alter the pageant’s image and reputation.

Of course, there were exceptions along the way. Colorado’s Rebecca King (1974) stood out because of her law-student demeanor and lack of tears at her crowning, but also because she was a vocal supporter of the Supreme Court’s
Roe v. Wade
ruling. The pageant was once again caught flat-footed by the arrival of a winner with a mind of
her own; King’s pre-recorded farewell speech a year later made a strong statement by essentially making no statement at all. Gone was the sweet-faced blonde with stick-straight hippie hair; she had been replaced by a glamorous woman who had clearly mastered the art of hot rollers. Becky King may have advanced the image of Miss America on the night of her crowning, and for every one of the 363-ish days that followed. In that last moment, though, she seemed to be a far more traditional Miss America than viewers probably expected.

A small moral victory in terms of the pageant’s evolution can be identified just two years later. New York’s Tawny Godin (1976) was similarly outspoken, and had a similarly unfussy, non-pageant look on the night she was crowned. A few months into her year,
People
called her “a lunge forward in Miss America’s journey into the 20th century,” noting that she had admitted to smoking pot, believed “abortion and premarital sex” were “matters of individual choice,” and had “nothing against homosexuals.” Godin, too, was glammed up on the same night one year later. Tellingly, though, Godin’s farewell speech included gratitude that “America has accepted me and my beliefs for what I am.”

But Godin’s target audience—and King’s, for that matter—had probably tuned out by then. Especially their peers, who were discovering other passions to pursue and fight for. At the beginning of the decade, for example, Phyllis George (1971) didn’t seem to have much to say at her post-crowning press conference aside from talking about her pet crab. Although George was for years one of the most visible and recognizable Miss Americas, the year she was crowned represented the highest ratings Miss America would ever see again. After that, except for a near-rival spike in September 1977, the ratings slowly but steadily declined until the pageant was bumped from network television entirely.

Miss America’s long, strange trip into the realm of cultural irrelevance is symbolic of the leadership crisis that has plagued the pageant for decades. To be fair, the leadership was in a no-win situation when it came to the women’s movement. To eliminate the swimsuit competition, for example, would have been seen as kowtowing to the feminists who were attacking it; to tighten its grip on the alleged girlie show was perceived as burying Miss America’s head in the sand. By the 1990s, the platform issue would be added to the list of requirements, mandating that each contestant choose, develop, and advocate for a community service initiative. Long after the actual seismic shift in America’s priorities, the pageant recognized that the country had evolved past it. More and more, winning a crown didn’t automatically make one a person to emulate, and Miss America’s eventual realization of that would be a rare moment of big-picture clarity. For a time, instead of performing her talent and appearing in department stores, Miss America would spend the bulk of her year engaging in social advocacy and community activism. But by then, much of the country had moved on; she was about twenty years too late for the party.

It’s certainly far from an original idea that the sixties and seventies were about bucking the establishment. Mom’s apple pie was pushed aside for LSD, baseball was less exciting than Woodstock, and although Bert Parks continued to sing it to the masses each September, Miss America was no longer “your ideal” in the eyes of many of her peers. Had there been another Bess Myerson at that moment, perhaps a minority winner, marginalized by the mainstream and thus motivated to say something substantive that connected her to the counterculture, it might have temporarily stemmed the tide. But here again, the pageant’s lack of organizational strategy became a liability. Miss America has always depended heavily on the massive network of volunteers who run the local and state competi
tions, and they have historically (although not completely) remained rooted in traditional values. The pageant, as an institution, simply isn’t structured to adapt quickly to changing times, or to risk taking on a controversial identity. If it loses the support of its volunteer network, many of whom donate thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours each year to support the national organization, the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.

As the country put the sixties and seventies in the rearview mirror, Reagan-era optimism and “greed is good” capitalism seemed to open a window of opportunity for the pageant to get back on track. The intersection of glamorous excess and conservative values was, after all, pretty much Miss America’s wheelhouse. Away went the simple A-line evening gowns of the seventies, relegated to the closet next to the crinolines of the fifties. Out came the shoulder pads, hot rollers, and millions upon millions of sequins and beads.

Ultimately, the pageant didn’t have to decide which path to take in the 1980s. Its path was chosen for it by exactly two women. The first, a strikingly beautiful, articulate New Yorker, inadvertently turned Miss America upside down. And four years later, a belly-dancing hospice nurse from Michigan turned it right side up again.

SEVEN

To a little girl growing up in South Jersey in the eighties, Miss America holds no controversy. She is mesmerizing, beautiful, and possesses an indescribable something that I will eventually learn to call poise
.

My family moves to Brigantine when I’m three. To this day, it remains a quiet, civilized little gem of an island, even as its better-known neighbors in Seaside Heights and wildwood roll their eyes at how the media portrays their communities. It’s the kind of oasis where neighbors warn each other about getting a speeding ticket for being three or four miles an hour over the strictly enforced speed limit. There are multimillion-dollar waterfront summer homes; there are modest bungalows built decades ago and occupied year-round. But one measure of its uniqueness is the manner in which the haves and the have-nots coexist with remarkable civility, equity, and respect
.