October 14, 2021 • 21 mins
The iconic Miss America pageant turned 100 this year, having crowned dozens of women who proudly went on to represent the institution across the U.S. But the contest was not without its controversies, including years of forcing women to walk across the stage in swimsuits. Is Miss America still relevant? Today we're talking with Amy Argetsinger, editor and staff writer for the Washington Post and author of "There She Was: The Secret History of Miss America."
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
From the Recount. I'm Kimberly Givant filling in for Rena
nine in, and you're listening to the Recount Daily Pod
today is Thursday, October four As a representative of young America.
It introduced them to powerful people. It gave them career
opportunities and ambitions they might not have had otherwise. That
was Amy Argut, Singer, editor and staff writer at The
(00:30):
Washington Post and author of There She Was, The Secret
History of Miss America. Rena nine in digs into that
with Amy a little later on, but first your morning headlines.
We begin in the Port of Los Angeles, where twenty
seven container ships are floating just offshore, waiting to dock
and be offloaded. Backups at US ports, factories and supply
(00:55):
lanes are just some of the factors clogging up the
entire global supply chain, causing higher prices here and around
the world. In an effort to relieve the bottleneck, Presidents
Joe Biden announced that starting today, the Port of Los
Angeles will begin operating around the clock. He added that
his administration is also encouraging states to accelerate their truck
(01:17):
driver licensing process to get more trucks on the road
moving goods. In an effort to ease the global gridlock ups,
Walmart and FedEx all announced they will make their operations
seven for the next few weeks. The Labor Department added
to Biden's woes, announcing that the Consumer Price Index, a
key reading of monthly inflation, jumped five point four percent
(01:41):
in September in comparison to As if that wasn't enough,
there's also an upcoming holiday shopping season to worry about.
With pain in the pocketbook and in Biden's approval ratings,
pressure to provide solutions to supply chain issues is building.
The President ended his speech with a plea for American
companies to step up and start making more products here
(02:06):
next to the Food and Drug Administration, which is now
urging manufacturers to make your meals a little less salty.
Due to a growing epidemic of cardiovascular disease and hypertension.
The f d A now wants to cut down the
nation's average sodium consumption by twelve percent over the next
two and a half years. Americans, on average, consume nearly
(02:29):
thirty four hundred milligrams of sodium per day. That's a
thousand more than the recommended amount. Nearly seventy percent of
the sodium currently consumed comes from packaged, processed, and restaurant foods.
The f d A is advising food producers to reduce
sodium levels gradually to allow time to reformulate recipes as
(02:51):
consumers adjust to the change in flavor. They also asked
the food industry not to offset the lower sodium levels
with more sugar or saturated At FATS we end in Washington,
d C. Where the Biden administration announced a plan to
develop large scale wind farms along the entire US coastline
(03:12):
east and west, Interior Secretary deb Holland said her agency
will formally begin the process of identifying federal waters that
could be leased to wind developers as soon as This
comes just months after the approval of the nation's first
commercial wind farm off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. The
(03:32):
push to develop offshore wind farms is just one part
of Biden's ambitious plan to cut the nation's fossil fuel
emissions in half by For those of you beach lovers
who are less than thrilled with the news, know that
there are plenty of hurdles to the approval process. First,
these projects are subjected to lengthy federal, state, and local
(03:54):
reviews before any leases are granted, weighing factors like harm
to endangered speed these or to local industries such as
fishing and tourism. Second, there's also a public foreign period
when people impacted can weigh in with their issues and concerns,
but before warrant. Nimby arguments also known as not in
(04:15):
my backyard are historically not very persuasive in blocking government projects.
And now to our daily deep dive. The storied Miss
America pageant turned one hundred this year. The iconic institution
crowd many women who ended up later breaking glass ceilings
throughout American society. But the pageant was not without its controversy,
(04:36):
including the judgment of women based on their parents. So
is Miss America still relevant today? We're talking to Amy Argut, Singer,
editor and staff writer for the Washington Post Style section
and author of There She Was, The Secret History of
Miss America. Hey, Amy, welcome, Hello, Thank you for having
me here. Wow a hundred years. First off, how did
(04:57):
this pageant even began? Who founded it? You know, it
started off very inauspiciously. It was basically a tourist trap.
This was a little side show to the big Fall
Frolic festival that the business owners of Atlantic City set
up essentially to extend the summer season past Labor Day.
(05:17):
It was, you know, a big party everyone in somewhere,
lots of dances and contests, and part of the publicity
involved a little beauty contest. They invited newspapers from towns
within driving distance to pick their most beautiful girls and
send them to Atlantic City. There are nine of them
in all in competition, and somehow this appeal to people
(05:40):
on such a basic level that it overshadowed the rest
of this festival and continued on for decades to come.
So what's changed In the hundred years? There have been
other beauty pageants here and there. This one, though, was
being hosted by a small town where your business minded community.
Even though it was a lively play, it was basically
(06:01):
run by good church people, and Miss America had to
attain a certain level of respectability in order to survive.
At one point in the nineteen thirties, the business centers
just shut it down because they thought it was becoming
too tacky, all of these publicity seeking women, and so
that's when they started adding talent competitions, so it wouldn't
just be the beauty thing. Eventually they added scholarships, which
(06:25):
the organizers thought of as a way to attract the
right kind of young women, the right class of young women, eventually,
you know, taking on good causes, selling more bonds. And
that's where Miss America was different from other beauty contests.
It was always striving for a certain level of respectability.
It always wanted to be more. I went on television
(06:46):
in nineteen fifty four, immediately became a big hit that
lasted for for several decades. The swimsuit competition, of course,
was always one of the more popular elements of it,
one of the defining elements. They finally got rid of
that in twenty a team and it's been a search
for its identity ever since. So Amy, for two years,
you visited pageants, You interviewed former winners and contestants, to
(07:09):
try and get a window in this hidden world, this
iconic institution. What you hear? What did you find out?
I found that a lot of women had conflicted viewpoints
on this. Many of them still felt like this was
a capstone of their life, something that really defined them.
It had taken them out of small towns. It had
launched them to this level of visibility where they were
being perceived, at least by the media or by this
(07:32):
organization as a representative of young America. It introduced them
to powerful people. It gave them career opportunities and ambitions
they might not have had otherwise. Some of them were
also conflicted. They were conflicted about having competed in something
where they had been walking across the stage in a swimsuit.
For the most part, though, they remained deeply invested in
(07:54):
this organization and wanted to see it thrive because it
had been something that had done so much to define them. So,
I mean, in your book there she was you say,
you love the Miss America pageant and you're not going
to apologize for it. What are the criticisms that sort
of still remain about the pageant and how do you
respond to them? That would be asking me to apologize
(08:14):
for liking it or apologizing for it. It's hard to
apologize for Miss America. I mean, it is an old
fashioned thing. I think I first started going to it
with friends, and you think you're gonna go to laugh
at it. It is this bizarre ritinal What does it
even mean, However, once you start watching it, it becomes
a spectator sport. It is a competition. It's like going
(08:37):
to the Kentucky Derby and you cannot help yourself but
try to think, Okay, who's going to be the winner?
Can I pick the winner? And what kept was coming
back for years was trying to figure out how to
predict who was going to win because it seemed to
stand for something. It seemed like there had to be
some kind of formula. What was it that they were
trying to measure here? Was it who's best looking? Was
(09:00):
it who's the best speaker? Was it who is the
most accomplished or most talented? And most of the times
it clearly wasn't anything like that. So you get drawn
in trying to think, well, what is this? What is
this that they're trying to reward. Anyway, the best I
could figure is that it was some kind of contest
of charisma, And to be honest, I think we all
play that game a lot, even if it's not Miss America.
(09:23):
I think that's what we're doing the presidential politics. A
lot of the time, you like to think that it's
a more elevated thing that you're trying to pick someone
on the basis of talent or the ability to do
their job. But at the end of the day, we're
all drawn to charisma and to try to figure out
what that means is a deeply appealing exercise. This is
(09:44):
like real reality TV back before there was reality TV. Absolutely,
it was an immediate hit. It was a hit because
it was so live and so fresh. You know, it's funny.
They didn't even talk about the swimsuits. Obviously, Yeah, there
are girls walking across the stage in swimsuits, and that
had to have been part of the appeal for TV audiences.
But what really captivated people that first year was the
(10:06):
young woman who was crowned Lie Merryweather. She burst into tears.
She looked to the heavens and evoked her late father
and she cried, and across the country, viewers were captivated
by this because it was so real that they were
seeing a young woman being elevated to fame overnight. Was
deeply appealing. And it's the same itch we scratched years later.
(10:27):
Starting in the two thousands, one, reality TV became so
appealing we got to take a quick break, but we'll
be right back with Amy Argut, singer author of There
She Was The Secret History of Miss America on The
Recount Daily Pod. Welcome back to the Recount Daily Pod
of podcast from the Recount and I Heart Radio. I'm
(10:48):
here with Amy arget, Singer, editor and staff writer for
the Washington Post Style section and author of There She Was,
The Secret History of Miss America. I want to talk
about some of the women who have been crowned own.
For instance, Phillis George Miss American nine. She was the
first woman to co host the Super Bowl, one of
the first women to hold an on air position, and
(11:08):
national televised sports broadcasting. Do you think Miss America really
helped her achieve that success in broadcasting? In a way?
It did. It got her out of Denton, Texas, and
it fed her ambitions. I talked to Phillis a lot.
Phillis passed away early last year. She of course, had
always been very bright and personable, and that's why she
(11:28):
surged at the top, that's why she won Miss America.
But I think the key thing is that all of
a sudden, that exposed her to a different world, and
it made her realize these ambitions that she might not
have ever realized if she had stayed in Denton, Texas.
The funny thing about Phillis is that she didn't have
a natural lane to go into. She wasn't a singer,
(11:50):
she wasn't an actress. She just had this ambition. She
wanted to do more, she wanted to continue to be
on television. And it was kind of an amazing convert
some events that she met the head of CBS Sports
right at a time when he was concerned about the ratings,
when he was wanting to branch out and try to
find a way to include women into sports programming, and
(12:12):
she hadn't thought about it before she gave it a try,
and it was absolutely a huge hit, and it changed broadcasting.
I mean it changed her career, of course, but it
changed broadcasting and that sports no longer had to be
three guys and blazers litigating a game to death. All
of a sudden, they opened up to sort of softer
side behind the scenes of athletes, which was the kind
(12:33):
of thing Phillis excelled at. And I've talked to other
women in sports who say that what she did it
normalized women in sports. It normalized women in broadcasting at
a time where you didn't really even have very many
women in local news, let alone sports, you know, one
of the things growing up and this was always something
we watched. But as a South Asian woman, it's such
(12:55):
an interesting dynamic because you didn't see South Asian women
for sure. In fact, another Miss Amy a co winner,
Vanessa Williams, she was the first black woman to win.
That didn't happen til three and then a year later
she had to give up the crown because of these
nude photos. That service also making history by being the
first person to resign for having been crowned Miss America.
How was the world of Miss America pageants treated black
(13:17):
women and people of color? You know, for the longest time,
race was a non issue because black people women of
color were completely excluded, as they were from so many
quadrants of society. Uh. In fact, there was a rule
on the books, they called it Rules seven, which stated
that all the contestants had to be women of good
health and of the white race and the c that
(13:40):
was actually in the rule. Actually in the rules, they
sometimes made exceptions. There are some women of Asian descent
who are contestants in the nineteen forties. Uh, But the
director of the Miss America program made it clear at
the time, she said, oh, yes, that rule is really
just supposed to keep black women out. She was very
explicit about it. She said, nero beauty cannot be compared
with white beauty. It was a very overtly exclusionary practice.
(14:05):
But you know, of course, even when they got rid
of the rule in the fifties, the system was was
just not set up to welcome women of color. It
was nine before any women of color one local pageants.
And this is because these small con pageants were invitation
only and they were not inviting women of color. It's
extraordinary how long it took until three before Vanessa broke
(14:29):
through in this way. And I can tell you it
was huge news. This was considered on par with Jackie
Robinson integrating Major League Baseball. If you can believe that,
I can't believe that. It's really incredible. Talk to me
a little bit about how the barriers still exist and
how is this sort of affected the larger Miss America franchise.
It's been a constant conversation about whether it's welcoming enough,
(14:52):
whether it is representative enough. Though a lot of the
awareness about diversity and getting rid of exclusion air practices,
a lot of that came up, I would say almost
too late from Miss America, because it came up at
a time when the numbers of women who are growing
up wanting to be Miss America, who are growing up
(15:12):
entering pageants, they were already beginning to drift away. And
then African American women have since been crowned. There has
been an Asian winner and Indian American winner. But at
that point it was hard to argue that Miss America
meant as much in society as a role model as
an aspirational thing anymore. I mean, how do you think
the women's liberation movement affected the world of pageants and
(15:36):
vice versa. You know, it's interesting. In night at a
fledgling organization called New York Radical Women hosted their first
big protest, their first big media and of any kind,
outside the doors of the nineteen Miss America pageant, and
it put them on the map. They came there to
protest the entire system as objectifying women, treating women like
(15:58):
live stock, forcing them cond form to certain beauty standards.
It was a very splashy protest. They had a trash
can in which they were throwing bras and girdles and
women's magazines installed all the headlines from the Miss American
pageant that year, and it really shook the pageant in
many ways, and of course it really helped put the
(16:20):
women's movement on the map. They quickly moved on to
bigger issues, of course, but the Miss American organization was
struggling with us for many years and thinking is a
swimsuit competition inappropriate? Are we treating women? Well? It was
still a very conservative organization though, and not very welcoming
of the women's movement. So what you saw happen was
this kind of change along the margins where the pageant
(16:42):
world changed because young women coming up in society were changing,
and starting in the seventies, you studies very interesting young
women who were obviously enjoying the rewards of the feminist movement,
who were in some ways advancing the feminist pause, but
they didn't consider themselves feminists. So I mean, my understanding
(17:04):
is that their ratings have been declining year after year.
What do you think the future of the Miss America
pageant looks like? And is Miss America still relevant? It's
funny that we ask if Miss America is still relevant.
No one asks if the Bachelor is still relevant? You
just ask how are the ratings? Are people still watching?
But because Miss America always strive to represent this ideal
(17:27):
and in a certain way, even the cynics among us
kind of bought into that, we always frame it in
a loftier sense. Is it still relevant? I'm here to say,
at the end of the day, the thing that kept
it afloat, the thing that kept it alive, the thing
that made it a brand, was television, and that's gone.
I started off this book trying to map what happened,
(17:47):
what went wrong? Why is the Miss America pageant dying?
Because indeed, you know, it used to have eighty million viewers,
but the most recent pageant they had maybe three million viewers.
It's really fallen off the radar in so many ways,
and so I tried to figure out what had gone wrong.
I kept being surprised to realize that Miss America had
a pretty good run. It's a relic of the nineteen
(18:08):
twenties that managed to catch on in nineteen fifties television.
It's a small miracle that it made it from the
nineteen fifties to the nineteen seventies, let along the nine nineties.
I'd say in the past twenty years, it has simply
been unable to keep up with the more sophisticated, dynamic
offerings of reality TV. And you continue to have this
(18:31):
debate about whether it's appropriate for young women to be
competing for scholarships and swimsuits at a time when there's
much raunchier stuff. When on other reality TV, I would
have to say it doesn't have much of the future,
so much of its mystique, so much of its finances
really did come from being a hit TV show. Tastes
have changed. The book is called There She Was, The
(18:53):
Secret History of Miss America. Amy, thank you so much
for joining us. Thank you, And now the look ahead.
Here's what else we're watching today. The Food and Drug
Administration's Vaccine Advisory Committee meets this morning to discuss authorizing
a booster shot from Maderna's COVID nineteen vaccine. The same
(19:13):
committee will reconvene tomorrow morning for a similar meeting regarding
the J and J booster. Right now, it's unclear if
either company will get the authorization. Earlier this week, the
FDA said Maderna did not meet all of the necessary
criteria because the efficacy of its two dose regimen remains
so high. In other words, the booster didn't give much
(19:35):
of a boost. J and Jay's shot maybe even less
likely to get authorized, based on a new federal study
that found that those who received the first J and
J shot are better off with a booster from Maderna
or Fiser next to Hollywood, which could be ground zero
for one of the largest coordinated strikes in the history
(19:55):
of show business. Film and television crews are demanding better
pay as well as adequate rest and meal periods amid
negotiations with studio rips. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage
Employees is threatening to walk if a deal isn't struck.
By Sunday at midnight, as many as sixty thousand crew
workers could be out of a job, holding production on
(20:18):
sets in both the US and abroad. Last, but not least,
we go to London, where the shredded Banksy painting is
somehow back, and once again it's up at auction. That's right,
the painting that partially self destructed immediately after it was
purchased in is returning today to the same Southeby's auction block.
(20:40):
And get this, it's worth even more. The image of
The Little Girl and her Red Balloon originally went for
one point four million dollars. Three years later, the piece
is expected to fetch somewhere between five and eight million dollars.
We'll see if Banksy has another trick in store for
us this time around. Have a great day. This is
(21:08):
The Recount Daily Pod, a podcast from The Recount and
I Heart Radio. Thank you to Amy Argot, Singer, editor
and staff writer at The Washington Post and author of
There She Was The Secret History of Miss America for
being on the show. If you liked this episode, please
subscribe to The Recount Daily Pod and leave a rating
(21:28):
on the Apple podcast app. Filling in for Rena nine in,
I'm Kimberly Gavant, Alexis Ramdow and Corey Wara engineered and
produced this podcast. Ariella Martin also produced Fondum Wogi did
the research. Pierre Bennamy is our senior producer and our
executive producer is Laura Beatty.
From the Recount. I'm Kimberly Givant filling in for Rena
nine in, and you're listening to the Recount Daily Pod
today is Thursday, October four As a representative of young America.
It introduced them to powerful people. It gave them career
opportunities and ambitions they might not have had otherwise. That
was Amy Argut, Singer, editor and staff writer at The
(00:30):
Washington Post and author of There She Was, The Secret
History of Miss America. Rena nine in digs into that
with Amy a little later on, but first your morning headlines.
We begin in the Port of Los Angeles, where twenty
seven container ships are floating just offshore, waiting to dock
and be offloaded. Backups at US ports, factories and supply
(00:55):
lanes are just some of the factors clogging up the
entire global supply chain, causing higher prices here and around
the world. In an effort to relieve the bottleneck, Presidents
Joe Biden announced that starting today, the Port of Los
Angeles will begin operating around the clock. He added that
his administration is also encouraging states to accelerate their truck
(01:17):
driver licensing process to get more trucks on the road
moving goods. In an effort to ease the global gridlock ups,
Walmart and FedEx all announced they will make their operations
seven for the next few weeks. The Labor Department added
to Biden's woes, announcing that the Consumer Price Index, a
key reading of monthly inflation, jumped five point four percent
(01:41):
in September in comparison to As if that wasn't enough,
there's also an upcoming holiday shopping season to worry about.
With pain in the pocketbook and in Biden's approval ratings,
pressure to provide solutions to supply chain issues is building.
The President ended his speech with a plea for American
companies to step up and start making more products here
(02:06):
next to the Food and Drug Administration, which is now
urging manufacturers to make your meals a little less salty.
Due to a growing epidemic of cardiovascular disease and hypertension.
The f d A now wants to cut down the
nation's average sodium consumption by twelve percent over the next
two and a half years. Americans, on average, consume nearly
(02:29):
thirty four hundred milligrams of sodium per day. That's a
thousand more than the recommended amount. Nearly seventy percent of
the sodium currently consumed comes from packaged, processed, and restaurant foods.
The f d A is advising food producers to reduce
sodium levels gradually to allow time to reformulate recipes as
(02:51):
consumers adjust to the change in flavor. They also asked
the food industry not to offset the lower sodium levels
with more sugar or saturated At FATS we end in Washington,
d C. Where the Biden administration announced a plan to
develop large scale wind farms along the entire US coastline
(03:12):
east and west, Interior Secretary deb Holland said her agency
will formally begin the process of identifying federal waters that
could be leased to wind developers as soon as This
comes just months after the approval of the nation's first
commercial wind farm off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. The
(03:32):
push to develop offshore wind farms is just one part
of Biden's ambitious plan to cut the nation's fossil fuel
emissions in half by For those of you beach lovers
who are less than thrilled with the news, know that
there are plenty of hurdles to the approval process. First,
these projects are subjected to lengthy federal, state, and local
(03:54):
reviews before any leases are granted, weighing factors like harm
to endangered speed these or to local industries such as
fishing and tourism. Second, there's also a public foreign period
when people impacted can weigh in with their issues and concerns,
but before warrant. Nimby arguments also known as not in
(04:15):
my backyard are historically not very persuasive in blocking government projects.
And now to our daily deep dive. The storied Miss
America pageant turned one hundred this year. The iconic institution
crowd many women who ended up later breaking glass ceilings
throughout American society. But the pageant was not without its controversy,
(04:36):
including the judgment of women based on their parents. So
is Miss America still relevant today? We're talking to Amy Argut, Singer,
editor and staff writer for the Washington Post Style section
and author of There She Was, The Secret History of
Miss America. Hey, Amy, welcome, Hello, Thank you for having
me here. Wow a hundred years. First off, how did
(04:57):
this pageant even began? Who founded it? You know, it
started off very inauspiciously. It was basically a tourist trap.
This was a little side show to the big Fall
Frolic festival that the business owners of Atlantic City set
up essentially to extend the summer season past Labor Day.
(05:17):
It was, you know, a big party everyone in somewhere,
lots of dances and contests, and part of the publicity
involved a little beauty contest. They invited newspapers from towns
within driving distance to pick their most beautiful girls and
send them to Atlantic City. There are nine of them
in all in competition, and somehow this appeal to people
(05:40):
on such a basic level that it overshadowed the rest
of this festival and continued on for decades to come.
So what's changed In the hundred years? There have been
other beauty pageants here and there. This one, though, was
being hosted by a small town where your business minded community.
Even though it was a lively play, it was basically
(06:01):
run by good church people, and Miss America had to
attain a certain level of respectability in order to survive.
At one point in the nineteen thirties, the business centers
just shut it down because they thought it was becoming
too tacky, all of these publicity seeking women, and so
that's when they started adding talent competitions, so it wouldn't
just be the beauty thing. Eventually they added scholarships, which
(06:25):
the organizers thought of as a way to attract the
right kind of young women, the right class of young women, eventually,
you know, taking on good causes, selling more bonds. And
that's where Miss America was different from other beauty contests.
It was always striving for a certain level of respectability.
It always wanted to be more. I went on television
(06:46):
in nineteen fifty four, immediately became a big hit that
lasted for for several decades. The swimsuit competition, of course,
was always one of the more popular elements of it,
one of the defining elements. They finally got rid of
that in twenty a team and it's been a search
for its identity ever since. So Amy, for two years,
you visited pageants, You interviewed former winners and contestants, to
(07:09):
try and get a window in this hidden world, this
iconic institution. What you hear? What did you find out?
I found that a lot of women had conflicted viewpoints
on this. Many of them still felt like this was
a capstone of their life, something that really defined them.
It had taken them out of small towns. It had
launched them to this level of visibility where they were
being perceived, at least by the media or by this
(07:32):
organization as a representative of young America. It introduced them
to powerful people. It gave them career opportunities and ambitions
they might not have had otherwise. Some of them were
also conflicted. They were conflicted about having competed in something
where they had been walking across the stage in a swimsuit.
For the most part, though, they remained deeply invested in
(07:54):
this organization and wanted to see it thrive because it
had been something that had done so much to define them. So,
I mean, in your book there she was you say,
you love the Miss America pageant and you're not going
to apologize for it. What are the criticisms that sort
of still remain about the pageant and how do you
respond to them? That would be asking me to apologize
(08:14):
for liking it or apologizing for it. It's hard to
apologize for Miss America. I mean, it is an old
fashioned thing. I think I first started going to it
with friends, and you think you're gonna go to laugh
at it. It is this bizarre ritinal What does it
even mean, However, once you start watching it, it becomes
a spectator sport. It is a competition. It's like going
(08:37):
to the Kentucky Derby and you cannot help yourself but
try to think, Okay, who's going to be the winner?
Can I pick the winner? And what kept was coming
back for years was trying to figure out how to
predict who was going to win because it seemed to
stand for something. It seemed like there had to be
some kind of formula. What was it that they were
trying to measure here? Was it who's best looking? Was
(09:00):
it who's the best speaker? Was it who is the
most accomplished or most talented? And most of the times
it clearly wasn't anything like that. So you get drawn
in trying to think, well, what is this? What is
this that they're trying to reward. Anyway, the best I
could figure is that it was some kind of contest
of charisma, And to be honest, I think we all
play that game a lot, even if it's not Miss America.
(09:23):
I think that's what we're doing the presidential politics. A
lot of the time, you like to think that it's
a more elevated thing that you're trying to pick someone
on the basis of talent or the ability to do
their job. But at the end of the day, we're
all drawn to charisma and to try to figure out
what that means is a deeply appealing exercise. This is
(09:44):
like real reality TV back before there was reality TV. Absolutely,
it was an immediate hit. It was a hit because
it was so live and so fresh. You know, it's funny.
They didn't even talk about the swimsuits. Obviously, Yeah, there
are girls walking across the stage in swimsuits, and that
had to have been part of the appeal for TV audiences.
But what really captivated people that first year was the
(10:06):
young woman who was crowned Lie Merryweather. She burst into tears.
She looked to the heavens and evoked her late father
and she cried, and across the country, viewers were captivated
by this because it was so real that they were
seeing a young woman being elevated to fame overnight. Was
deeply appealing. And it's the same itch we scratched years later.
(10:27):
Starting in the two thousands, one, reality TV became so
appealing we got to take a quick break, but we'll
be right back with Amy Argut, singer author of There
She Was The Secret History of Miss America on The
Recount Daily Pod. Welcome back to the Recount Daily Pod
of podcast from the Recount and I Heart Radio. I'm
(10:48):
here with Amy arget, Singer, editor and staff writer for
the Washington Post Style section and author of There She Was,
The Secret History of Miss America. I want to talk
about some of the women who have been crowned own.
For instance, Phillis George Miss American nine. She was the
first woman to co host the Super Bowl, one of
the first women to hold an on air position, and
(11:08):
national televised sports broadcasting. Do you think Miss America really
helped her achieve that success in broadcasting? In a way?
It did. It got her out of Denton, Texas, and
it fed her ambitions. I talked to Phillis a lot.
Phillis passed away early last year. She of course, had
always been very bright and personable, and that's why she
(11:28):
surged at the top, that's why she won Miss America.
But I think the key thing is that all of
a sudden, that exposed her to a different world, and
it made her realize these ambitions that she might not
have ever realized if she had stayed in Denton, Texas.
The funny thing about Phillis is that she didn't have
a natural lane to go into. She wasn't a singer,
(11:50):
she wasn't an actress. She just had this ambition. She
wanted to do more, she wanted to continue to be
on television. And it was kind of an amazing convert
some events that she met the head of CBS Sports
right at a time when he was concerned about the ratings,
when he was wanting to branch out and try to
find a way to include women into sports programming, and
(12:12):
she hadn't thought about it before she gave it a try,
and it was absolutely a huge hit, and it changed broadcasting.
I mean it changed her career, of course, but it
changed broadcasting and that sports no longer had to be
three guys and blazers litigating a game to death. All
of a sudden, they opened up to sort of softer
side behind the scenes of athletes, which was the kind
(12:33):
of thing Phillis excelled at. And I've talked to other
women in sports who say that what she did it
normalized women in sports. It normalized women in broadcasting at
a time where you didn't really even have very many
women in local news, let alone sports, you know, one
of the things growing up and this was always something
we watched. But as a South Asian woman, it's such
(12:55):
an interesting dynamic because you didn't see South Asian women
for sure. In fact, another Miss Amy a co winner,
Vanessa Williams, she was the first black woman to win.
That didn't happen til three and then a year later
she had to give up the crown because of these
nude photos. That service also making history by being the
first person to resign for having been crowned Miss America.
How was the world of Miss America pageants treated black
(13:17):
women and people of color? You know, for the longest time,
race was a non issue because black people women of
color were completely excluded, as they were from so many
quadrants of society. Uh. In fact, there was a rule
on the books, they called it Rules seven, which stated
that all the contestants had to be women of good
health and of the white race and the c that
(13:40):
was actually in the rule. Actually in the rules, they
sometimes made exceptions. There are some women of Asian descent
who are contestants in the nineteen forties. Uh, But the
director of the Miss America program made it clear at
the time, she said, oh, yes, that rule is really
just supposed to keep black women out. She was very
explicit about it. She said, nero beauty cannot be compared
with white beauty. It was a very overtly exclusionary practice.
(14:05):
But you know, of course, even when they got rid
of the rule in the fifties, the system was was
just not set up to welcome women of color. It
was nine before any women of color one local pageants.
And this is because these small con pageants were invitation
only and they were not inviting women of color. It's
extraordinary how long it took until three before Vanessa broke
(14:29):
through in this way. And I can tell you it
was huge news. This was considered on par with Jackie
Robinson integrating Major League Baseball. If you can believe that,
I can't believe that. It's really incredible. Talk to me
a little bit about how the barriers still exist and
how is this sort of affected the larger Miss America franchise.
It's been a constant conversation about whether it's welcoming enough,
(14:52):
whether it is representative enough. Though a lot of the
awareness about diversity and getting rid of exclusion air practices,
a lot of that came up, I would say almost
too late from Miss America, because it came up at
a time when the numbers of women who are growing
up wanting to be Miss America, who are growing up
(15:12):
entering pageants, they were already beginning to drift away. And
then African American women have since been crowned. There has
been an Asian winner and Indian American winner. But at
that point it was hard to argue that Miss America
meant as much in society as a role model as
an aspirational thing anymore. I mean, how do you think
the women's liberation movement affected the world of pageants and
(15:36):
vice versa. You know, it's interesting. In night at a
fledgling organization called New York Radical Women hosted their first
big protest, their first big media and of any kind,
outside the doors of the nineteen Miss America pageant, and
it put them on the map. They came there to
protest the entire system as objectifying women, treating women like
(15:58):
live stock, forcing them cond form to certain beauty standards.
It was a very splashy protest. They had a trash
can in which they were throwing bras and girdles and
women's magazines installed all the headlines from the Miss American
pageant that year, and it really shook the pageant in
many ways, and of course it really helped put the
(16:20):
women's movement on the map. They quickly moved on to
bigger issues, of course, but the Miss American organization was
struggling with us for many years and thinking is a
swimsuit competition inappropriate? Are we treating women? Well? It was
still a very conservative organization though, and not very welcoming
of the women's movement. So what you saw happen was
this kind of change along the margins where the pageant
(16:42):
world changed because young women coming up in society were changing,
and starting in the seventies, you studies very interesting young
women who were obviously enjoying the rewards of the feminist movement,
who were in some ways advancing the feminist pause, but
they didn't consider themselves feminists. So I mean, my understanding
(17:04):
is that their ratings have been declining year after year.
What do you think the future of the Miss America
pageant looks like? And is Miss America still relevant? It's
funny that we ask if Miss America is still relevant.
No one asks if the Bachelor is still relevant? You
just ask how are the ratings? Are people still watching?
But because Miss America always strive to represent this ideal
(17:27):
and in a certain way, even the cynics among us
kind of bought into that, we always frame it in
a loftier sense. Is it still relevant? I'm here to say,
at the end of the day, the thing that kept
it afloat, the thing that kept it alive, the thing
that made it a brand, was television, and that's gone.
I started off this book trying to map what happened,
(17:47):
what went wrong? Why is the Miss America pageant dying?
Because indeed, you know, it used to have eighty million viewers,
but the most recent pageant they had maybe three million viewers.
It's really fallen off the radar in so many ways,
and so I tried to figure out what had gone wrong.
I kept being surprised to realize that Miss America had
a pretty good run. It's a relic of the nineteen
(18:08):
twenties that managed to catch on in nineteen fifties television.
It's a small miracle that it made it from the
nineteen fifties to the nineteen seventies, let along the nine nineties.
I'd say in the past twenty years, it has simply
been unable to keep up with the more sophisticated, dynamic
offerings of reality TV. And you continue to have this
(18:31):
debate about whether it's appropriate for young women to be
competing for scholarships and swimsuits at a time when there's
much raunchier stuff. When on other reality TV, I would
have to say it doesn't have much of the future,
so much of its mystique, so much of its finances
really did come from being a hit TV show. Tastes
have changed. The book is called There She Was, The
(18:53):
Secret History of Miss America. Amy, thank you so much
for joining us. Thank you, And now the look ahead.
Here's what else we're watching today. The Food and Drug
Administration's Vaccine Advisory Committee meets this morning to discuss authorizing
a booster shot from Maderna's COVID nineteen vaccine. The same
(19:13):
committee will reconvene tomorrow morning for a similar meeting regarding
the J and J booster. Right now, it's unclear if
either company will get the authorization. Earlier this week, the
FDA said Maderna did not meet all of the necessary
criteria because the efficacy of its two dose regimen remains
so high. In other words, the booster didn't give much
(19:35):
of a boost. J and Jay's shot maybe even less
likely to get authorized, based on a new federal study
that found that those who received the first J and
J shot are better off with a booster from Maderna
or Fiser next to Hollywood, which could be ground zero
for one of the largest coordinated strikes in the history
(19:55):
of show business. Film and television crews are demanding better
pay as well as adequate rest and meal periods amid
negotiations with studio rips. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage
Employees is threatening to walk if a deal isn't struck.
By Sunday at midnight, as many as sixty thousand crew
workers could be out of a job, holding production on
(20:18):
sets in both the US and abroad. Last, but not least,
we go to London, where the shredded Banksy painting is
somehow back, and once again it's up at auction. That's right,
the painting that partially self destructed immediately after it was
purchased in is returning today to the same Southeby's auction block.
(20:40):
And get this, it's worth even more. The image of
The Little Girl and her Red Balloon originally went for
one point four million dollars. Three years later, the piece
is expected to fetch somewhere between five and eight million dollars.
We'll see if Banksy has another trick in store for
us this time around. Have a great day. This is
(21:08):
The Recount Daily Pod, a podcast from The Recount and
I Heart Radio. Thank you to Amy Argot, Singer, editor
and staff writer at The Washington Post and author of
There She Was The Secret History of Miss America for
being on the show. If you liked this episode, please
subscribe to The Recount Daily Pod and leave a rating
(21:28):
on the Apple podcast app. Filling in for Rena nine in,
I'm Kimberly Gavant, Alexis Ramdow and Corey Wara engineered and
produced this podcast. Ariella Martin also produced Fondum Wogi did
the research. Pierre Bennamy is our senior producer and our
executive producer is Laura Beatty.
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