The
Miss America pageant is a long-standing
competition which awards scholarships to young women from the 50
states plus the District of Columbia
, Puerto Rico and the
US Virgin
Islands
. The first-prize winner of the national
pageant is awarded the title of "Miss America" for one year.
The pageant originated as a
beauty
contest in 1921, but now prefers to avoid this term since
Swimsuit and Evening Wear comprise 35 percent of the overall score
used to judge contestants.
The pageant began in Atlantic City,
New Jersey
and was held there each year in September through
2004 (except for the year 2000, when it was held on October
14).
In January
2006 the pageant moved to its new home and time in Las Vegas, Nevada
. The
pageant presents itself as a "scholarship pageant," and the primary
prizes for the winner and her runners-up are given scholarships to
the institution of her choice. The Miss America Scholarship
program, along with its local and state affiliates is the largest
provider of scholarship money to young women in the world, and in
2006 made available more than $45 million in cash and scholarship
assistance. Since most of the contestants are college graduates
already, or on the verge of graduating, most of their prize money
is devoted to
graduate school or
professional school, or to pay
off student loans for courses already taken. The Miss America
Pageant is the largest provider of college
scholarships for women in the United
States.
The current Miss America is
Katie Stam
from Indiana who won the title on January 24, 2009.
History
The Miss
America competition originated on September 8, 1921, as a two-day
beauty contest in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The event that year was still called the
Atlantic City Pageant, and the winner of the grand prize, the
3-foot Golden Mermaid trophy, wasn't even called "Miss America"
until 1922, when she re-entered the pageant. The pageant was
initiated in an attempt to keep tourists in Atlantic City after the
Labor Day weekend.
In 1935, Talent was added to the competition. At the time,
non-white women were barred from competing, a restriction that was
codified in the pageant's "Rule number seven," which stated that
"contestants must be of good health and of the white race." No
African American women participated until 1970, although African
Americans did appear in musical numbers as far back as 1923, when
they were cast as slaves. Until at least 1940, contestants were
required to complete a biological questionnaire tracing their
ancestry.
In the early years of the pageant, a beauty competition of the
women wearing
bathing suits was the
main event.
Yolande Betbeze, Miss
America 1951, refused to pose for publicity pictures while wearing
a swimsuit, citing that she wanted to be recognized as a serious
opera singer.
Catalina swimwear, one of the Miss America
sponsors, withdrew and created the
Miss
USA/
Universe pageants.
The 1955 pageant was the first to be televised; the winner was
Lee Meriwether.
In 1959, Mary Ann Mobley of Brandon,
Mississippi
won the Miss
Mississippi title and then went on to win the Miss America
pageant. The next year, her successor as Miss
Mississippi (Lynda Lee Mead of Natchez
) also went on to win the Miss America title.
The only states to have produced Miss Americas in consecutive years
are Pennsylvania (1935 and 1936), Mississippi (1959 and 1960), and
Oklahoma (2006 and 2007).
Mary
Katherine Campbell, Miss Columbus, Ohio, won in both 1922 and
1923 before the rules were changed to limit an entrant to
participating in only one year.
The pageant has been nationally
televised
since 1954. It peaked in the early 1960s, when it was repeatedly
the highest-rated program on American television. It was seen as a
symbol of the United States, with Miss America often being referred
to as the female equivalent of the
President. The pageant
stressed conservative values; contestants were not expected to have
ambitions beyond being a good wife (there is also a
Mrs. America pageant). For decades it was,
practically speaking, a pageant for young white women, though by
the 1980s black women were winning the crown. Since the 1980s seven
black women have been crowned Miss America.
In 1964, the Miss America 1965 pageant took place just weeks after
Atlantic City hosted the
Democratic National
Convention.
With the rise of
feminism and the
civil rights movement the pageant became a
target of protests, and its audience began to fade. The 1968
protest, in which a group of feminists on the Atlantic City
boardwalk crowned a live sheep Miss America and threw various
beauty accouterments, such as bras, into a trash can, shocked many
people. They planned to burn the beauty accounterments, but police
warned them that it would be dangerous, because they were standing
on a wooden boardwalk. People who knew about the plans, but did not
know that the bras were not burned, started the story that
feminists "burned bras." The brochure distributed at the protest,
"
No More Miss America," was
later canonized in feminist scholarship. In the 1970s it began to
change, admitting blacks and encouraging a new type of professional
woman. This was symbolized by the 1974 victory of
Rebecca Ann King, a law student who
publicly supported legalization of
abortion in the United States
while Miss America.
Still, ratings flagged. In an attempt to create a younger image,
Bert Parks, the pageant's famous emcee
from 1955 to 1979, was dismissed. Parks had virtually become an
American icon, singing the show's signature song, "There She Is,
Miss America" as the newly-crowned Miss America took her walk down
the ramp at the end of each year's pageant. His dismissal prompted
public criticism; in protest,
Johnny
Carson organized a letter-writing campaign to reinstate Parks,
but it was unsuccessful. Former TV
Tarzan and
host of "
Face The Music",
Ron Ely, hosted the pageant that year but was gone
the next. Since Parks' departure, many have taken on the role of
Miss America TV host. Since Ely, pageant hosts have included
Regis Philbin and
Kathie Lee Gifford,
Gary Collins and Mary Ann Mobley
(herself a former Miss America),
Meredith Vieira,
Boomer Esiason,
Wayne
Brady,
Mario Lopez and
James Denton.
Mario Lopez hosted the 2009 pageant.
In 1984,
Vanessa Williams became
the first African-American woman to be crowned Miss America, but
resigned from her duties in scandal. The job was subsequently
filled by first runner-up
Suzette
Charles who carried out the remaining seven weeks as Miss
America 1984. Both women are now included on the canonical list of
Miss America laureates; Williams is officially designated Miss
America 1984 and Charles is officially designated Miss America
1984b.
Many Miss America winners live on in relative obscurity, but
Vanessa Williams has made an internationally prominent career as a
singer selling millions of albums worldwide and achieving critical
acclaim as an actress on stage, in film and on television. Others
who have had prominent careers in
show
business include
Bess Myerson,
Mary Ann Mobley,
Lee Meriwether, and
Phyllis George. 1989 winner
Gretchen Carlson went on to have a career
in television journalism. 1973 winner
Terry Meeuwsen went on to co-host the
Christian talk show
The 700 Club. Myerson, who was the first
Jewish Miss America, was selected in 1945, in the face of official
antisemitism, including a request by pageant director Lenora
Slaughter that she change her name to one less
Jewish-sounding.
In the 1990s, the pageant was reformed into The Miss America
Organization, a not-for-profit corporation with three divisions:
the Miss America Pageant, a
scholarship
fund, and the Miss America foundation.
Since the pageant's peak in the early 1960s, its audience has
eroded significantly. In 2004, when its audience fell to fewer than
10 million viewers, its broadcaster,
ABC, decided to drop the
pageant. "Broadcasters show data proving that the talent show and
the interviews, the pageant's answers to feminist criticism, were
the least popular portions of the pageant, while the swimsuit part
still had the power to bring viewers back from the kitchen," said
New York Times reporter Iver
Peterson. "So pageant officials - who still require chaperons for
contestants when they are in Atlantic City - are thinking about
showing a little more."
In 2005 the pageant announced a new television agreement with
MTV Networks'
Country Music Television.
In
addition to the move to CMT, there was a switch in the pageant's
schedule from September to January 21, 2006, and a move away from
Atlantic City and Boardwalk
Hall
after 85 years to the Las Vegas Strip
and the Theatre for the Performing Arts
at the Aladdin Hotel-Casino
. The show was hosted by
James Denton, a star of the television
show
Desperate
Housewives. The pageant remained in Las Vegas for 2007 and
was again broadcast on CMT. In March 2007, it was announced that
CMT no longer chose to broadcast the pageant from 2008.
Discovery Networks then picked up the
pageant a few months after to air in January on
TLC, along with an associated show,
Countdown to the
Crown which airs on Friday nights leading up to the actual
pageant.
In 2009, the pageant was staged at Las
Vegas's Planet Hollywood Resort and
Casino
.
Due to the altered schedule, Miss America 2005,
Alabama's
Deidre
Downs, reigned for 16 months instead of the usual 12. She was
only the second longest-reigning Miss America: in the early days of
the pageant,
Mary Katherine
Campbell from
Ohio won the pageant
twice, in 1922 and again in 1923. Campbell was also first-runner-up
in the 1924 pageant, and when the judge's scores revealed that she
had almost won the crown a third time, the pageant created a new
rule that a contestant may only win the title of Miss America once
(but still allowed a contestant to compete more than once.) Later
on, the rule was changed so that a contestant may only compete in
the Miss America pageant once, whether or not she wins the
title.
In the last 51 years of Miss America (through 2008), 27 winners
have been blonde, 12 were brown-haired, 9 were black-haired, and 3
were red-haired. The average number of steps that a contestant
takes during a pageant day is 8939, according to organizers.
Several Miss Americas travel in excess of 20,000 miles a month
making personal appearances. Many have earned over $100,000 in
personal appearance fees during their reign.
National Sweetheart
Though not
officially connected with the Miss America pageant, since the
1940s, first runners-up from Miss America's state pageants have
been invited to the National
Sweetheart pageant in Hoopeston, Illinois
.
Judging
1) Personal Interview In the Personal Interview
portion of the competition each contestant converses with the
judges on a variety of topics, from frivolous trivia to serious
political and social issues. The contestant is awarded points for
being well spoken, polite, articulate, and confident. This
competition is less known by the general public than other aspects
of the pageant, since unlike the other three, it does not take
place on a theater stage, nor is it usually televised. The Personal
Interview counts for 25 percent of the contestant's overall
score.
2) Talent In the Talent portion of the competition
the contestant performs on stage before the judges and an audience.
The most common talents are
singing or
dancing, but a variety of other talents may be
exhibited at the contestant's choosing; some have demonstrated
juggling, playing
musical instruments,
ventriloquism, quick-draw
painting; one even chose to demonstrate the proper
way to pack a
suitcase . The Talent portion
of the competition counts for 35% of the contestant's overall
score.
3) Lifestyle & Fitness in Swimsuit In the
Swimsuit portion of the competition contestants walk on the stage
in swimsuits and high-heeled shoes. The Miss America pageant
regulates certain minimum standards of modesty the swimwear must
comply with. Judging for this portion of the competition focuses on
overall physical fitness, poise and posture. Until recently, the
contestants were required to wear identical, somewhat dated,
one-piece suits. Recently, the organization has allowed contestants
to choose their own more revealing two-piece suits,
bikinis, or more modern one-piece suits. In 1996 the
pageant held a phone-in poll asking the public to weigh in on
whether or not the Swimsuit competition should be continued. A
staggering 87% voted to retain the swimsuit portion. The Swimsuit
competition counts for 15% of the contestant's overall score.
4) Evening Wear In the Evening Wear portion of the
competition, the contestants are judged on poise and bearing as
they walk across the stage. The Evening Wear portion of the
competition counts for 20% of the contestant's overall score.
5) Onstage Question During the Evening Wear
competition the contestants are asked a random question from a
pre-determined list that they must then answer onstage with no
preparation. Questions are topical and usually involve current
events. The questions require the contestant to have knowledge of
the event and provide an opinion. The Onstage Question counts for
5% of the contestant's total score
A casual wear section was added to the Miss America competition in
2003, and was filtering down to state and local competitions;
however, the "casual wear" section was canceled in 2006 and is no
longer in use at any level of the Miss America Program.
Winners
Hosts
Television broadcasters
- ABC:
1954-1956
- CBS: 1957-1965
- NBC: 1966-1996
- ABC:
1997-2005
- CMT: 2006-2007
- TLC: 2008-Present
See also
References
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