The Miss America protest was a demonstration held at the
Miss America 1969
Miss America 1969, the 42nd Miss America pageant, was held at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey on September 7, 1968 on NBC Network. Miss Illinois was the winner, Judith Ford performing on a trampoline during the talent competition ...
contest on September 7, 1968, attended by about 200 feminists and civil rights advocates. The feminist protest was organized by
New York Radical Women
New York Radical Women (NYRW) was an early second-wave radical feminist group that existed from 1967 to 1969. They drew nationwide media attention when they unfurled a banner inside the 1968 Miss America pageant displaying the words "Women' ...
and included putting symbolic feminine products into a "Freedom Trash Can" on the
Atlantic City
Atlantic City, often known by its initials A.C., is a coastal resort city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States. The city is known for its casinos, Boardwalk (entertainment district), boardwalk, and beaches. In 2020 United States censu ...
boardwalk, including bras, hairspray, makeup, girdles, corsets, false eyelashes, mops, and other items. The protesters also unfurled a large banner emblazoned with "
Women's Liberation
The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism that emerged in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which effected great ...
" inside the contest hall, drawing worldwide media attention to the Women's Liberation Movement.
Reporter Lindsy Van Gelder drew an analogy between the feminist protesters throwing bras in the trash cans and
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
protesters who burned their draft cards. The bra-burning trope was permanently attached to the event and became a catch-phrase of the feminist era.
Origins
The
New York Radical Women
New York Radical Women (NYRW) was an early second-wave radical feminist group that existed from 1967 to 1969. They drew nationwide media attention when they unfurled a banner inside the 1968 Miss America pageant displaying the words "Women' ...
was a group of women that had been active in the
civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
, the
New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, g ...
, and
antiwar movement
A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals, such as the ending of a particular war (or wars) or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world pea ...
s. The group was organized in the fall of 1967 by former TV child star
Robin Morgan
Robin Morgan (born January 29, 1941) is an American poet, writer, activist, journalist, lecturer and former child actor. Since the early 1960s, she has been a key radical feminist member of the American Women's Movement, and a leader in the ...
,
Carol Hanisch
Carol Hanisch (born 1942) is a radical feminist activist. She was an important member of New York Radical Women and Redstockings. She is best known for popularizing the phrase "the personal is political" in a 1970 essay of the same name.https:/ ...
,
Shulamith Firestone
Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Firestone (born Feuerstein; January 7, 1945 – August 28, 2012) was a Canadian-American radical feminist writer and activist. Firestone was a central figure in the early development of radical feminism and second-w ...
, and
Pam Allen. They were searching for a suitable way to draw attention to their movement.
Hanisch said that she got the idea to target the Miss America contest after the group, including Morgan,
Kathie Sarachild
Kathie Sarachild (born Kathie Amatniek in 1943) is an American writer and radical feminist. In 1968, she took the last name "Sarachild" after her mother Sara, coined the phrase "Sisterhood is Powerful" in a flier she wrote for the keynote speech s ...
,
Rosalyn Baxandall
Rosalyn Baxandall ( Fraad; June 12, 1939 – October 13, 2015) was an American historian of women's activism and feminist activist.
Early life and education
Baxandall was born in New York City on June 12, 1939. Her father, Lewis M. Fraad, was ...
,
Alix Kates Shulman
Alix Kates Shulman (born August 17, 1932) is an American writer of fiction, memoirs, and essays, and a prominent early radical activist of second-wave feminism. She is best known for her bestselling debut adult novel, ''Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Qu ...
,
Patricia Mainardi Patricia "Pat" Mainardi (born November 10, 1942) is a leading authority on nineteenth-century European art and European and American modernism, and a pioneering professor of women's studies.
Career and activism
Pat Mainardi was part of the radical ...
,
Irene Peslikis Irene Peslikis (October 7, 1943 – November 28, 2002) was an American feminist artist, activist, and educator. She was one of the early founders and organizers in the women's art movement, especially on the east coast.
Life and career
Irene Peslik ...
, and
Ellen Willis
Ellen Jane Willis (December 14, 1941 – November 9, 2006) was an American left-wing political essayist, journalist, activist, feminist, and pop music critic. A 2014 collection of her essays, ''The Essential Ellen Willis,'' received the Nation ...
, watched a movie that depicted how beauty standards oppressed women. It included clips of a Miss America parading in her swimsuit. "It got me thinking that protesting the pageant might be a good way to launch the movement into the public consciousness," Hanisch said. "Because up until this time, we hadn't done a lot of actions yet. We were a very small movement. It was kind of a gutsy thing to do. Miss America was this '
American pie' icon. Who would dare criticize this?"
The group decided to incorporate the techniques successfully used by the
civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
and adapt it to the new idea of
women's liberation
The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism that emerged in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which effected great ...
.
Purpose
In a letter on August 29, 1968, to the city mayor, Morgan requested a permit. She explained that the purpose of the protest was to demonstrate their objections to the pageant's focus on women's body over their brains, "on youth rather than maturity, and on commercialism rather than humanity".
Organizers and participants
In her letter requesting a permit, Morgan named the sponsor of the protest as "Women's Liberation", a "loose coalition of small groups and individuals".
[ She was the key organizer of the protest.] The advisory sponsor was Florynce Kennedy
Florynce Rae Kennedy (February 11, 1916 – December 21, 2000) was an American lawyer, radical feminist, civil rights advocate, lecturer and activist.
Early life
Kennedy was born in Kansas City, Missouri, to an African-American family. Her ...
's Media Workshop, an activist group she founded in 1966 to protest the media's representation of African Americans
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
. Other members of New York Radical Women were involved in protesting and documenting the event. Bev Grant
Bev Grant is an American musician, photographer, filmmaker, and activist based in New York City.
Personal life
Grant grew up in Portland, Oregon, and moved to New York with her husband in the 1960s. She later separated from her husband, was ra ...
, a musician and filmmaker / photographer with Newsreel
A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, informa ...
who part in the protests, also shot film and took photos of the protests and of the pageant itself. Peggy Dobbins
Peggy may refer to:
People
* Peggy (given name), people with the given name or nickname
Arts and entertainment
* ''Peggy'' (musical), a 1911 musical comedy by Stuart and Bovill
* ''Peggy'' (album), a 1977 Peggy Lee album
* ''Peggy'' (191 ...
, a performer and activist, created a life-sized Miss America puppet which she displayed on the boardwalk in the guise of a carnival barker auctioning her off. Participants also came from National Organization for Women
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is an American feminist organization. Founded in 1966, it is legally a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and in Washington, D.C. It ...
, the feminist Jeannette Rankin
Jeannette Pickering Rankin (June 11, 1880 – May 18, 1973) was an American politician and women's rights advocate who became the first woman to hold federal office in the United States in 1917. She was elected to the U.S. House of Representat ...
Brigade and the American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
. Men were barred from taking part.[
The ]press release
A press release is an official statement delivered to members of the news media for the purpose of providing information, creating an official statement, or making an announcement directed for public release. Press releases are also considere ...
for the event contained sentiments that resonated well beyond the movement, such as “Miss America is a walking commercial for the pageant’s sponsors. Wind her up and she plugs your product…” and “last year she went to Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
to pep-talk our husbands, fathers, sons and boyfriends into dying and killing with a better spirit…"
Protest event
Atlantic City boardwalk
About 200 members of the group New York Radical Women
New York Radical Women (NYRW) was an early second-wave radical feminist group that existed from 1967 to 1969. They drew nationwide media attention when they unfurled a banner inside the 1968 Miss America pageant displaying the words "Women' ...
traveled to Atlantic City in cars and chartered buses. On September 7, 1968, about 400 feminists from New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
, Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
, and New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
gathered on the Atlantic City Boardwalk outside the Miss America Pageant
Miss America is an annual competition that is open to women from the United States between the ages of 17 and 25. Originating in 1921 as a "bathing beauty revue", the contest is now judged on competitors' talent performances and interviews. As ...
. They protested what they called "The Degrading Mindless-Boob-Girlie Symbol" and American society's normative beauty expectations. They marched with signs, passed out pamphlets, including one titled ''No More Miss America'', and crowned a live sheep—comparing the beauty pageant to livestock competitions at county fair
An agricultural show is a public event exhibiting the equipment, animals, sports and recreation associated with agriculture and animal husbandry. The largest comprise a livestock show (a judged event or display in which breeding stock is exhibit ...
s, including an illustration of a woman's figure marked up like a side of beef.
Freedom Trash Can
They threw a number of feminine products into a "Freedom Trash Can". These included mops, pots and pans, copies of ''Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan may refer to:
Food and drink
* Cosmopolitan (cocktail), also known as a "Cosmo"
History
* Rootless cosmopolitan, a Soviet derogatory epithet during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1949–1953
Hotels and resorts
* Cosmopoli ...
'' and ''Playboy
''Playboy'' is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother.
K ...
'' magazines, false eyelashes, high-heeled shoes, curlers, hairspray, makeup, girdle
A belt, especially if a cord or rope, is called a girdle if it is worn as part of Christian liturgical vestments, or in certain historical, literary or sports contexts.
Girdles are used to close a cassock in Christian denominations, including th ...
s, corset
A corset is a support garment commonly worn to hold and train the torso into a desired shape, traditionally a smaller waist or larger bottom, for aesthetic or medical purposes (either for the duration of wearing it or with a more lasting effe ...
s, and bras; items the protesters called "instruments of female torture" and accouterments of what they perceived to be enforced femininity
Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered fe ...
.
Protesters saw the pageant and its symbols as oppressing women. They decried its emphasis on an arbitrary standard of beauty. They were against the labeling, public worship and exploitation of the "most beautiful girl in America." Sarachild, one of the protest organizers, reported that "huge crowds gathered for the picketing. People were grabbing our fliers out of our hands."
Protest inside pageant
Along with tossing the items into the trash can and distributing literature outside, four protesters including Kathie Sarachild
Kathie Sarachild (born Kathie Amatniek in 1943) is an American writer and radical feminist. In 1968, she took the last name "Sarachild" after her mother Sara, coined the phrase "Sisterhood is Powerful" in a flier she wrote for the keynote speech s ...
and Carol Hanisch
Carol Hanisch (born 1942) is a radical feminist activist. She was an important member of New York Radical Women and Redstockings. She is best known for popularizing the phrase "the personal is political" in a 1970 essay of the same name.https:/ ...
bought tickets and entered the hall. While the outgoing 1968 Miss America, Debra Barnes Snodgrass, was giving her farewell speech
A farewell speech or farewell address is a speech given by an individual leaving a position or place. They are often used by public figures such as politicians as a capstone to the preceding career, or as statements delivered by persons relating to ...
, the women unfurled a bedsheet from the balcony that said "Women's Liberation" and began to shout " women's liberation!" and "No more Miss America!" They got out a half-dozen shouts before they were quickly removed by police. While TV cameras at the event didn't show them, newspapers all around the country covered the protest. "I think it kind of made the phrase 'women's liberation' a household term," Sarachild says. "The media picked up on the bra part," Hanisch said later. "I often say that if they had called us 'girdle burners,' every woman in America would have run to join us."
Outgoing Miss America Snodgrass said that the protesters were diminishing the hard work of thousands of competitors who were attending school and had put a lot of effort into developing their talents.
Origin of "bra-burning"
The dramatic, symbolic use of a trash can to dispose of feminine objects caught the media's attention. Protest organizer Hanisch said about the Freedom Trash Can afterward, "We had intended to burn it, but the police department, since we were on the boardwalk, wouldn't let us do the burning." A story by Lindsy Van Gelder in the ''New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established ...
'' carried a headline "Bra Burners and Miss America". Her story drew an analogy between the feminist protest and Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
protesters who burned their draft cards. Individuals who were present said that no one burned a bra nor did anyone take off her bra.
However, respected author Joseph Campbell
Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the ...
found a local news story reporting that articles were in fact burned, and a witness corroborating the news story. The article and the witness contradicted the feminists' statements, stating that lingerie was in fact burned at least briefly that day. An article on page 4 of the Atlantic City ''Press'' reported, "Bra-burners blitz boardwalk". It stated, "As the bras, girdles, falsies, curlers, and copies of popular women's magazines burned in the ''Freedom Trash Can'', the demonstration reached the pinnacle of ridicule when the participants paraded a small lamb wearing a gold banner worded ''Miss America.''" A second story in the same newspaper written by Jon Katz
Jon Katz (born August 8, 1947) is an American journalist, author, and photographer. He was a contributor to the online magazine ''HotWired'', the technology website ''Slashdot'', and the online news magazine '' Slate''. In his early career as an a ...
did not mention burning lingerie, but Campbell interviewed Katz. Katz, who was present that day, confirmed that bras and other items had been set on fire: "...the fire was small, and quickly was extinguished." The feminists insisted afterward that the story was wrong.
The parallel between protesters burning their draft cards and women burning their bras were encouraged by organizers including Robin Morgan
Robin Morgan (born January 29, 1941) is an American poet, writer, activist, journalist, lecturer and former child actor. Since the early 1960s, she has been a key radical feminist member of the American Women's Movement, and a leader in the ...
. The phrase became headline material and was quickly associated with women who chose to go braless.[ Feminism and "bra-burning" then became linked in popular culture.]
Deborah J. Cohan, an associate professor of sociology at the University of South Carolina, Beaufort, believes that bra-burning has become negatively associated with feminism.
Historical precedent
The bra-burning trope
Trope or tropes may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Trope (cinema), a cinematic convention for conveying a concept
* Trope (literature), a figure of speech or common literary device
* Trope (music), any of a variety of different things ...
echoed an earlier generation of feminists who called for burning corsets as a step toward liberation. In 1873 Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (August 31, 1844January 28, 1911) was an early feminist American author and intellectual who challenged traditional Christian beliefs of the afterlife, challenged women's traditional roles in marriage and family, an ...
wrote:
Backlash
Author and feminist Bonnie J. Dow suggested that the association between feminism and bra-burning was encouraged by individuals who opposed the feminist movement. "Bra-burning" created an image that women were not really seeking freedom from sexism, but were attempting to assert themselves as sexual beings. This might lead individuals to believe, as she wrote in her article "Feminism, Miss America, and Media Mythology", that the women were merely trying to be "trendy, and to attract men".
Women associated with an act like symbolically burning their bra may be seen by some as law-breaking radicals, eager to shock the public. This view may have supported the efforts of opponents to feminism and their desire to invalidate the movement. Some feminist activists believe that anti-feminists use the bra-burning myth and the subject of going braless to trivialize what the protesters were trying to accomplish that day and the feminist movement in general. Joseph Campbell described the reaction that ensued as "serving to denigrate and trivialize the objectives of the women’s liberation movement."[
]
''No More Miss America!''
The protest planners produced a press release before the event that was afterward turned into a pamphlet titled ''No More Miss America!''. The pamphlet called on women to help "reclaim ourselves for ourselves". Written by Robin Morgan
Robin Morgan (born January 29, 1941) is an American poet, writer, activist, journalist, lecturer and former child actor. Since the early 1960s, she has been a key radical feminist member of the American Women's Movement, and a leader in the ...
, it listed ten characteristics of the Miss America pageant that Morgan believed degraded women.
Morgan wrote that the pageant contestants epitomize the "Degrading Mindless- Boob-Girlie Symbol". The runway
According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a man-made surface (often asphalt concrete, as ...
parade is a metaphor of the 4-H Club county fair, where the animals are judged for teeth, hair, grooming, and so forth, and where the best specimen is awarded the blue ribbon
The blue ribbon is a symbol of high quality. The association comes from The Blue Riband, a prize awarded for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by passenger liners and, prior to that from Cordon Bleu, which referred to the blue ribbon ...
. Since its inception in 1921, only Caucasian contestants had been accepted as finalists, so the authors derided the contest as "Racism with Roses". They criticized the "cheerleader" tour taken by the winner to visit troops in foreign countries as "Miss America as Military Death Mascot". Her support of troops personifies the "unstained patriotic American womanhood our boys are fighting for".
She wrote that Miss America is a walking commercial for the pageant's sponsors, making her a primary part of "The Consumer Con-Game". It deplored the win-or-you're-worthless competitive disease, which it described as "Competition Rigged and Unrigged". The authors criticized "The Woman as Pop Culture Obsolescent Theme", which they described as the promotion of women who are young, juicy, and malleable, but upon the selection of a new winner each year, are discarded.
She compared the pageant to ''Playboy
''Playboy'' is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother.
K ...
s centerfold as sisters under the skin, describing this as "The Unbeatable Madonna–Whore Combination". The writers accused the competition of encouraging women to be inoffensive, bland, and apolitical, ignoring characteristics like personality, articulateness, intelligence, and commitment. They called this "The Irrelevant Crown on the Throne of Mediocrity". The pamphlet said the pageant was "Miss America as Dream Equivalent To", positioning itself as the penultimate goal of every little girl, while boys were supposed to grow up and become President of the United States
The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United Stat ...
. Men are judged by their actions, women by appearance.
Morgan wrote that the pageant attempted thought control
Brainwashing (also known as mind control, menticide, coercive persuasion, thought control, thought reform, and forced re-education) is the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques. Brainwash ...
, creating the illusion of "Miss America as Big Sister Watching You". It attempted to enslave women in high-heeled, low-status roles, and to inculcate values in young girls like women as beasts of shopping. "No More Miss America!" was the very first public pamphlet of the time to share the movement's ideals; therefore, complaints about the Pageant, recorded in the pamphlet, outlined and predicted numerous problems these women might have to overcome in their battle for equality. The pamphlet became a source for feminist scholarship.
Legacy
A six-minute documentary, ''Up Against the Wall Miss America'' (1968), concerns the Miss America protest.
The demonstration was largely responsible for bringing the women's liberation movement into the American national consciousness. The event "'marked the end of the movement's obscurity' and made both 'women's liberation' and beauty standards topics for national discussion".
"No more Miss America! Ten points of protest" was included in the 1970 anthology ''Sisterhood is Powerful
''Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement'' is a 1970 anthology of Feminism, feminist writings edited by Robin Morgan, a feminist poet and founding member of New York Radical Women. It is one of the f ...
'', edited by Robin Morgan
Robin Morgan (born January 29, 1941) is an American poet, writer, activist, journalist, lecturer and former child actor. Since the early 1960s, she has been a key radical feminist member of the American Women's Movement, and a leader in the ...
.
Civil rights protest
Also on September 7, 1968, in Atlantic City, a separate civil rights demonstration took place in the form of a beauty pageant. African Americans and civil rights activists gather to crown the first Miss Black America. The winner, nineteen-year-old Philadelphia native Saundra Williams, had been active on the civil rights scene prior to the competition. As a student at Maryland State College, she helped organize the Black Awareness Movement with her classmates and staged a sit-in
A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to mo ...
at a local restaurant, which refused to serve African Americans.[Klemesrud, Judy. "There's Now Miss Black America". ''New York Times'', 8 Sep. 1968: 81. Print]
Born to a middle-class family, she aspired to a career in social work
Social work is an academic discipline and practice-based profession concerned with meeting the basic needs of individuals, families, groups, communities, and society as a whole to enhance their individual and collective well-being. Social work ...
and child welfare
Child protection is the safeguarding of children from violence, exploitation, abuse, and neglect. Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides for the protection of children in and out of the home. One of the ways to e ...
. She explained her motivation for running in the pageant:
Miss America does not represent us because there has never been a black girl in the pageant. With my title, I can show black women that they too are beautiful. ... There is a need to keep saying this over and over because for so long none of us believed it. But now we're finally coming around.
The competition, organized by civil rights activist J. Morris Anderson, was held at the Ritz Carlton a few blocks from Convention Hall
Convention Hall was a convention center in Kansas City, Missouri that hosted the 1900 Democratic National Convention and 1928 Republican National Convention.
It was designed by Frederick E. Hill and built at the corner of 13th and Central and cos ...
, where the Miss America pageant took place the same evening. The Miss Black America contestants, prior to competition, rode in a convertible motorcade through the streets of Atlantic City and were greeted with cheers and applause, especially from members of the black community.[Curtiss, Charlotte. "Miss America Pageant is Picketed by 100 Women", New York Times 9 Sep. 1968: 54. Print.]
The Miss Black America protest and the NYRW protest were driven by fundamentally different motivation. NYRW protested the very idea of beauty standards and the pageant that upheld them. The Miss Black America protesters had no grievances with the idea of beauty standards, but with the fact that they strongly favored white women. While NYRW wanted to dismantle the whole idea of beauty, Miss Black America protesters wanted to expand notions of beauty to include all races. [Kreydatus, Beth. “Confronting the ‘Bra-Burners:’ Teaching Radical Feminism with a Case Study.” The History Teacher 41, no. 4 (2008): 489–504. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40543887.]
Feminist protester and organizer Robin Morgan said "We deplore Miss Black America as much as Miss White America but we understand the black issue involved."
See also
* Feminist sex wars
The feminist sex wars, also known as the lesbian sex wars, or simply the sex wars or porn wars, are terms used to refer to collective debates amongst feminists regarding a number of issues broadly relating to sexuality and sexual activity. Diff ...
References
External links
*
1960s Bra Burning
Video footage of protest
{{DEFAULTSORT:Miss America Protest
1968 in New Jersey
1968 in women's history
1968 protests
Feminism and history
Feminist protests
History of Atlantic City, New Jersey
History of women in New Jersey
Miss America
Protests in New Jersey
Second-wave feminism
September 1968 events in the United States