suits in the 1920s, those were the outsider, those were the scandalous womens. those were the bad girls. so the scholarship program developed to give it some credibility, right after world war ii. and talent was introduced and all of that. and it wasn t really until 1968 the protest that the women started being seen as a little bit backward. and so that s very interesting to think about. you know, in all that time, these were the women who were out there and going to college in the 1950s. think about that. yeah, right. this is an interesting point. so when we think about the development of feminism over a period, the idea of sort of being revealing, of being sex positive, of being educated, those are actually aspects that we now think of as central to second wave feminism. to your point about it being a symptom and not a cause, i think it s actually a cyclical relationship. i think it is both a symptom and a reinforcement of that beauty standard, of that expectation that women be
that s some way substantiative. that s the way the pageant chose to do it. we all know in this business, how we look matters. it s why i wanted to bring in your scholarship. this sense of sort of the need to somehow defend pageants, right? in part the point i m making. on the one hand, you have this pageant that depose back to 1921, that is this large scholarship provider. on the other hand, it s pursue that part of the feminist movement began with a critique of the pageant. so is there a space for thinking about whether or not they have any value, and what that value is, not just in terms of the scholarship significance, but is there any social redeeming value in them? first of all, i really believe that the miss america pageant or program, as it has been called over the years, is more of a symptom of what s going on with women and society today, and even feminism, and not a cause of it. so what it does, it reflects society. and when it started, those women who competed in their b