Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood

Time to Read
5 hrs 43 mins

Reading Time

5 hrs 43 mins

How long to read Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood?

The estimated word count of Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood is 85,560 words.

A person reading at the average speed of 250 words/min, will finish the book in 5 hrs 43 mins. At a slower speed of 150 words/min, they will finish it in 9 hrs 31 mins. At a faster speed of 450 words/min, they will finish it in 3 hrs 11 mins.

Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood - 85,560 words
Reading Speed Time to Read
Slow 150 words/min 9 hrs 31 mins
Average 250 words/min 5 hrs 43 mins
Fast 450 words/min 3 hrs 11 mins
Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood by Margot Mifflin
Authors
Margot Mifflin

More about Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood

85,560 words

Word Count

for Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood

9 hours and 12 minutes

Audiobook length


Description

From an author praised for writing “delicious social history” (Dwight Garner, The New York Times) comes a lively account of memorable Miss America contestants, protests, and scandals―and how the pageant, nearing its one hundredth anniversary, serves as an unintended indicator of feminist progress Looking for Miss America is a fast-paced narrative history of a curious and contradictory institution. From its start in 1921 as an Atlantic City tourist draw to its current incarnation as a scholarship competition, the pageant has indexed women’s status during periods of social change―the post-suffrage 1920s, the Eisenhower 1950s, the #MeToo era. This ever-changing institution has been shaped by war, evangelism, the rise of television and reality TV, and, significantly, by contestants who confounded expectations. Spotlighting individuals, from Yolande Betbeze, whose refusal to pose in swimsuits led an angry sponsor to launch the rival Miss USA contest, to the first black winner, Vanessa Williams, who received death threats and was protected by sharpshooters in her hometown parade, Margot Mifflin shows how women made hard bargains even as they used the pageant for economic advancement. The pageant’s history includes, crucially, those it excluded; the notorious Rule Seven, which required contestants to be “of the white race,” was retired in the 1950s, but no women of color were crowned until the 1980s. In rigorously researched, vibrant chapters that unpack each decade of the pageant, Looking for Miss America examines the heady blend of capitalism, patriotism, class anxiety, and cultural mythology that has fueled this American ritual.