Miss America Contesters and Contestants: Discourse about Social "Also-Rans"

In introducing my remarks on Bonnie J. Dow's essay, I, as a card-carrying feminist, begin with a confession of sorts. Miss America 1968 was my personal hero. When Debra Barnes from Kansas was crowned in the fall of 1967, I was 13. I had lived all my life on a small struggling farm near McCune, Kansas, population of around 400, and I was poised to follow the four older of my several siblings to become a first-generation high school student. Barnes had been reared by her father and blind mother in the only slighter larger Moran, Kansas, about 40 miles away, and although I had never traveled there, I had heard rumors it boasted a nearby stoplight and more than one gas station.

Over 30 years later, I still recall certain details surrounding this particular Miss America contest, due, in part, to the intense regional media attention showered on this national event featuring a homegrown girl enrolled at the local college. Indeed, excepting talk of Jacqueline Kennedy's regal bearing at her husband's funeral, I had never before witnessed a person of my gender at any level generate such heightened regional media interest or community conversation. But my enduring memory also results from various meanings I invested in this talented young woman with a past not so dissimilar from mine. In my socially conservative world in which female inferiority was literally an article of religious faith, female aspirations were hardly encouraged. And I had watched my bright and gifted oldest sister who, when forbidden to apply to college or even to take purportedly "impractical" high school courses no woman would ever need, decide to marry at 17, take up years of factory work, and embark on a long struggle to keep a corrosive mix of disappointments and sense of inadequacy at bay. Thus, odd as it may now seem, through Barnes I entertained the subversive possibility of female mobility—higher education, travel, perhaps professional opportunity, and exposure to diverse intriguing people—that had appeared beyond my reach. Moreover, as a female adolescent struggling to locate an identity in a conservative religious household heavily influenced by the principle of coverture—the submersion of female identity into a husband or father—I also recall being captivated by Barnes's articulation of self and her disarming self-assurance. I remember, for example, being struck by her calm demeanor when winning the title, as if she considered herself worthy of it. Barnes had qualified for the finalist interview round, I recall, by winning both the swimsuit and talent competitions, the latter of which entailed her piano rendition of a popular film score I would later come to view through feminist eyes with some irony given the cultural context. Its title: "Born Free."

Contrary to most of my adolescent romantic fantasies, Miss America 1968—upon ending her reign at that fateful Miss America pageant Dow details—soon became a fundamentalist minister's wife, replaced her famous name with her husband's, and settled back into the traditional rhythms of small-town Midwestern life. During high school, I caught occasional glimpses of this former national beauty queen when she officially appeared at county fairs, parades, and half-time ceremonies of sporting events where, as we know, males heroically performed, and females dutifully spectated, applauded, did cartwheels, and adorned decorated floats.

In subsequent years, I worked my way through two degrees at the nearby college that proudly marketed itself as the alma mater of Miss America 1968. As an undergraduate, I played for a time on the first women's intercollegiate basketball team, compliments of Title IX, saw the historic Roe v. Wade decision handed down, watched ratification efforts for the Equal Rights Amendment, and took courses from a male professor who held annual gatherings with the heretical theme of "Let's All Miss the Miss America Pageant Together." In the midst of what seemed to be...