Here She Is by Hilary Levey Friedman

Author:Hilary Levey Friedman [Friedman, Hilary Levey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press

Overall, individual pageant contestants’ diverse characteristics became something to celebrate at a variety of pageants, and in some cases the locales contestants hailed from became something to celebrate as well. Even as mainstream pageants were becoming more diverse during the last decades of the twentieth century, a growing diversity of pageants also made different women feel represented and applauded. As identity politics grew during this time, so too did the types of pageants available to those who identified as female, and greater attention was paid to increasing diversity of all types, even within niche pageants.

IDENTITY PAGEANTS AS A THIRD WAVE?

Many historians and scholars consider the identity politics of the 1980s and 1990s as the Third Wave of feminism. I disagree, and a documentary called Miss . . . or Myth? about protests outside the annual Miss California pageant in Santa Cruz helps explain why.148 In 1979 a group of radical feminists started an annual protest called Myth California. The concept was not new—it was clearly modeled after the New York Radical Women’s protest outside the 1968 Miss America Pageant. The 1987 documentary featured the 1985 Miss California pageant and the counter pageant, juxtaposing images from both. In the film, Debra Johnson, a black contestant at Miss California from Compton, discusses how she felt her race hindered her success at the state pageant. This open discussion of race shows how the rise of identity politics played out more explicitly during the latter half of the Second Wave, but it also was not something entirely new.

In 1988 there was another feminist protest at Miss California, this one onstage. During the crowning of another contestant, Michelle Anderson, representing Santa Cruz, pulled a banner out of her dress that read “Pageants Hurt All Women.”149 At the same time Anderson yelled that the night’s winner, Marlise Ricardos, was anorexic and that her body was covered in bruises.150 Ricardos, the first Latina to ever win the Miss California crown, was upset about the accusations and that her crowning moment was so marred after she had tried to win the state title for years. Despite the accusations and drama, Ricardos went on to be named third runner-up to Gretchen Carlson at Miss America.151

Even though national pageants were beginning to embrace identity politics in the 1980s, there was still a need and demand for identity-specific pageants. Often, there were competing demands. You may have noticed a pattern: one type of pageant will develop and then a competitor follows: Miss Black America and then Miss Black USA; Ms. Senior America and then Ms. Senior USA; Miss U.S. Latina and then Miss Latina USA. Because of how charged some of these identities can be due to historical marginalization that continues today, people often have very specific ideas about how those pageants should be run, what they should reward, and what the prizes should be. Because groups do not always agree internally, rival competitions frequently emerge. The ways in which different marginalized identities combine to form new identities, which competing racial

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