The Miss America Joke

The scene is Atlantic City. The all-female panel of Miss America judges is huddling to select a winner, but the procedure is only a formality; of the 50 original entrants, 49 have already been eliminated: it has been proved, you see, that 27 had, during the contest, consumed at least one drink containing alcohol; another 22, watchdogs reported, had been seen conversing with members of the opposite sex, unchaperoned. The sole remaining girl is only moderately appetizing in her bathing suit, and her performance in the talent contest consisted of a series of deep knee-bends to the strains of I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy, supplemented by the rendering of that beloved melody on the alto kazoo, more or less in tune and rhythm. Nevertheless, it is she who will reign as Queen of America's biggest beauty contest.

Far-fetched? According to the rules and conditions presently prevailing, it's almost near-fetched enough to happen this year. It is a measure of our manic determination to call America first in all things that we believe we annually produce the world's greatest beauty contest. There was a time when the Miss America thing was a beauty contest, of sorts. That was long ago. Today, the "Miss America Pageant," to give the joke its right name, is a triumph of commerce and momism, hedged with more rules than govern the daily lives of the inhabitants of a monastery, and productive, usually, of a vaguely pleasant appearing, but most undistinguished female to reign the whole year through as Miss America.

This is not typical of beauty contests in general. Foreign contests are especially noted for their single-minded concentration on beauty. Even other American contests popular today ignore "talent" in favor of appearance. Though blatantly organized for publicity purposes, the Miss Universe affair, for instance, still tries to honor the best-looking girl it can find. Compared with America, the Universe invariably ends up in far better shape. When Mrs. Penny Duncan was chosen Mrs. America in 1951, physical beauty was the criterion, and a suspected lack of it caused three-fourths of the judges to accuse her of wearing falsies. In order to refute this charge, she had to retire behind the scenes with a reporter (female) who verified her, or their, authenticity. There was a time when beauty contests were fun, but that was before the women took over. Knowing New Yorkers were amused to see a few years ago, in the photographs of contestants for a big and important beauty contest, the shining faces of two of the town's most popular callgirls. A Canadian promoter who sponsored a beauty contest for the Province of Quebec found photos of two of the leading entrants, Miss Montreal and Miss Quebec City, cheek-by-jowl in Le Devoir, a daily newspaper. This did not fill him with joy, however, for they were rogues' gallery shots -- both had been pinched for hustling. A French girl thought up a direct method of blitzing the judges of a contest in Nice, France. She wasn't even officially entered when she jumped on the platform, stripped naked in a trice, and announced that she wished to be judged. She was judged to be out of order, but nobody was very angry. And back in the 20s, when the Miss America Pageant did not resemble a spinsters' sewing circle, Earl Carroll was often one of the judges, a duty undoubtedly made more interesting by the fact that he always had some of his Vanities chorines among the contestants.

There is, of course, no danger of anything untoward occurring in the Miss America Pageant of today; there is also no danger of anything interesting happening. The women have seen to that.

A nation governed by reason should include in its constitution a provision against the supervision of beauty contests by women. Women dominate the executive direction and management of the Miss America contest, and they have, of course, ruined it. When it began it was fairly simple: good-looking girls in bathing suits paraded before judges until one of them was declared winner. Today, partially in order to drag the proceedings out sufficiently long to justify a $60,000 TV fee and to turn the house over three times, the girls are judged in three categories: in bathing suits, in evening gowns, and for something called talent. The boundaries of this latter category can be stretched to accommodate the ability to break four balloons, the width of the stage away, with seven arrows. Contestants have been known to sing, dance, "recite," trampoline-tumble and even crochet -- all badly, usually -- and this depressing certainty is one of the reasons why hardened reporters, scenting an assignment to Atlantic City for the duration of the contest, tend to whimper and beg for mercy, promise reformation, the restitution of owed monies and teetotal abstinence for life, if only they are let off. Among the delights they will find waiting for them in Atlantic City if go they must is The Miss America Press Bible, which says, among other things: "Thou Shalt Not: (1) Call any contestant on the phone at her hotel or while she is in the convention hall; (2) Interview or photograph the contestant when she is not accompanied by or in the presence of her hostess; (3) Photograph anyone or anything in the Miss America Coronation Ball."

The so-called Bible goes on like that, in an impious mockery of the Decalogue, imperiously and insultingly laying down The Law to members of the press. The brains behind the Pageant have not only forgotten that it is a beauty contest -- they have also forgotten that without the cooperation of the fourth estate they would not exist.

The hawk-eyed "hostesses" who stick leech-like to the contestants during their every waking moment are instructed to discontinue "Any interview which causes distress to a contestant, or any picture which is improper, indecent, embarrassing or in poor taste." Since there may be wide areas of disagreement over a question of taste between a major magazine photographer and an Atlantic City clubwoman, quarrels are common and the press seldom wins.

In addition to the press Bible, the Pageant authorities are the proud authors of a little booklet which tells contestants how to comport themselves. This is all set down in a series of official rules which are strictly of the read-'em-and-weep variety. A couple of the best go like this:

"Contestants are not permitted at any time to enter a cocktail lounge, nightclub, bar, inn, tavern or any place where liquor is served, while competing for the Miss America title. Violation of this rule will bring automatic elimination from further judging, although they will not be advised of the action." (Italics ours.) This is an enchanting refinement. It's perfectly possible for a girl to knock herself out for three days and nights, practicing her talent exhibition, perhaps something really hard, like drawing George Washington's face with colored ink from squirt-guns, and starving herself to get those last fractions off her bottom, and all the time she's dead and doesn't know it, from having been spotted sneaking a short beer. But to go on with the pamphlet, said to be from the pen of Miss Eleanora Slaughter, Pageant Director since 1940: "Contestants are not permitted to speak to any man, including male members of their own families, unless a local hostess is present. They are not permitted to dine with a man at their hotels or elsewhere; nor are they permitted to receive a man in their rooms, their own families not excepted." Time magazine reported Judge Bennett Cerf as wryly wondering if the girls were all certified virgins, his implication being that they met rigid standards in all other respects. Judge Moss Hart's cri de coeur reflected the ineffable boredom of three days' exposure to this nonsense: "We're God's fools!"

The point and purpose of the cordon sanitaire around the girls is, ostensibly anyway, to proclaim to all and sundry that the contestants are germ-free in the moral sense as well as the physical; but it would seem that it is also expected to nip in the bud even the most baseless gossip. Consider, for instance, a remark made by Chairlady of Hostesses Mrs. John M. Alton. Explaining the necessity of keeping fathers sundered from their daughters (to whom they have presumably had free access for a couple of decades), Mrs. Alton said, "Why, we had one father who was the handsomest thing you ever saw. If his daughter had been seen alone with him, people might have thought anything." People like Mrs. Alton might have thought anything, is what she meant.

When you come right down to basics, the measures taken to cover and control the girls in the Miss America Pageant have extended far beyond anything that might be considered necessary as precaution against mishap: what presently goes on in Atlantic City is simply a reflection of the fact that America's biggest beauty contest has developed into a fiasco by and for women, and narrow-minded women at that. There is a spreading rumor that the bathing suit exhibition on which the contest is founded is highly offensive to some of the reigning geezers of Atlantic City, and it is not impossible that a bull from the hand of Miss Slaughter will before long signal its demise.

What is the significance of the fact that America's most highly-touted beauty contest is run by and for women? When your mind has stopped reeling under the socio-sexual narcissistic-cum-lesbian-cum-matriarchal implications of it all, you might twist it around the following questions:

What do the present rules and regulations have to do with the selection of a beautiful girl? Is a girl who refuses to talk to a man unchaperoned automatically better-looking than a blabbermouth? Is a girl automatically ugly because she enjoys an occasional drink or an occasional man?

The biddies of Atlantic City say yes.

Miss America contestant manages a smile as she arrives for judging, despite atmosphere of grim security created by guards and chaperone. Girls can be eliminated from contest for speaking to a man or sipping a small beer.

Forest of legs (above) was formed by recent Miss Universers, who gathered at poolside for uninhibited water-frolicking.

Miss England, acting like a watery jack-in-the-box, was engagingly unabashed by an unexpected accident (below).