Pop, the Question (S5: E38)
The Beauty of Pageants
Featured Guest Hilary Levey Friedman, PhD (Sociologist, Brown University Professor, and Author of Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America)
Host and Producer Melinda Lewis, PhD (Associate Director, Marketing & Media)
Dean Paula Marantz Cohen, PhD (Dean, Pennoni Honors College)
Executive Producer Erica Levi Zelinger (Director, Marketing & Media)
Producer Brian Kantorek (Assistant Director, Marketing & Media)
Research and Script Melinda Lewis, PhD
Audio Engineering and Editing Brian Kantorek
Original Theme Music Brian Kantorek
Production Assistance Noah Levine
Graphic Design Camille Velasquez
Logo Design Michal Anderson
Additional Voiceover Malia Lewis
Recorded October 22, 2021 through virtual conferencing.
Pop, the Question is a production of Marketing & Media in Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University.
The views expressed in this podcast are not necessarily those of Drexel University or Pennoni Honors College.
Copyright © 2022 Drexel University
To learn more about Hilary Levey Friedman, visit www.hilaryleveyfriedman.com.
Episode Summary
Beauty pageants have a prominent history in American culture, where they evolved from baby contests at state fairs to full-blown Miss America extravaganzas for millions of viewers to enjoy. With its evolution, pageantry in all its splendor has found a home in popular culture and inspired TV shows like The Bachelor and Toddlers & Tiaras, movies like Miss Congeniality and Drop Dead Gorgeous, and also the way social media influencers comport themselves. Host Dr. Melinda Lewis examines the history, trends, and cultural impact of beauty pageants with Dr. Hilary Levey Friedman, a Brown University sociology professor, the author of Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America, and the daughter of a former Miss America winner.
TRANSCRIPT
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Speaker 1:
(singing).
Melinda Lewis:
Welcome to Pop, The Question, a podcast that exists at the intersection of pop culture and academia.
We sit down and talk about our favorite stuff, through the lenses of what we do and who we are. From
Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University, Dr. Melinda Lewis here, I'm your host.
Melinda Lewis:
I'm talking today with Hilary Levey Friedman, the author of Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the
Beauty Pageant in America. She's a sociologist at Brown University and has been teaching about beauty
pageants in American society.
Melinda Lewis:
Hi Hilary.
Hilary Levey Friedman:
Hi, thanks for having me.
Melinda Lewis:
I'm so excited to talk to you about how you came to be interested in pageants, which is through
primarily your mother, Miss America 1970 Pamela Eldridge, and growing up in and around pageants.
What I'm interested though, is how you came to go from being around pageants to wanting to continue
to study pageants.
Hilary Levey Friedman:
Yes, so I grew up around pageants, I never competed myself. And I found them interesting, and I didn't
fully understand until I was older, that that was more of an unusual thing, that it was part of my life.
When I went away to college it was shortly after the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, and I discovered
sociology, but my project that I ended up doing was why mothers enroll their very young daughters in
child beauty pageants. That lead me down different paths in graduate school, but I always kept feeling
this pull back to answering some of these questions I still had about not only child pageants but
pageantry more generally. And I didn't realize it at the time but I was probably looking for a way to stay
connected to my mom subconsciously.
Speaker 2:
And now ladies and gentleman, let us welcome our reigning Miss America, Miss America 1970 Pamela
Ann Eldred.
Speaker 2:
(singing)
Melinda Lewis:
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One of the things I also really liked was that it is clearly well researched and well developed but at the
same time it's also so incredibly accessible. And I'm wondering how you struck that balance between
writing and incorporating theory and incorporating your research while also making it really accessible
to just people who are interested in pageants.
Hilary Levey Friedman:
People would sometimes say "Oh what's your ideal audience?" And I was like "So, it's a Venn diagram of
people who read the New Yorker and people who watch The Bachelor" and people were like "Oh my
gosh, there's no overlap there at all!" And I was like "Well... there is, in fact!"
Speaker 3:
Dominique. Please accept this rose.
Dominique:
Gladly.
Speaker 3:
Jamie? Jamie, will you accept this rose?
Hilary Levey Friedman:
And so that was sort of how I always thought about it. And yes, obviously people who do pageants just
have an innate interest so I was sort of less concerned about appealing to them per se and more the
people who again, I think anyone who watches The Bachelor just might not think about how that's kind
of the new version of Miss America, what Miss America was when it started on TV in the 1950s and I
more wanted to get people to think in a different way about other pop culture things.
Chris Harrison:
The stage is empty now, but it's about to be filled with 53 smart, beautiful, and talented young women.
Hello everybody I'm Chris Harrison.
Brooke Burke-Charvet:
And I'm Brooke Burke-Charvet.
Chris Harrison:
Brooke, good to be back on this Miss America stage with you again.
Brooke Burke-Charvet:
Always a pleasure to be with you. Let's meet the contestants.
Hilary Levey Friedman:
You know, of course Chris Harrison used to host Miss America, he no longer hosts The Bachelor either
but the man who created The Bachelor, Mike Fleiss actually judged the Miss America pageant. The year
that this woman who was Miss Wisconsin won, and her crowning picture became sort of iconic, because
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she wasn't wearing waterproof mascara, so she was crying with these Tammy Faye Bakker black streaks
down her cheeks.
Chris Harrison:
Miss... Wisconson! Laura Kaeppeler!
Hilary Levey Friedman:
So anyway, he judged that year and she was Miss America, she had her super interesting platform, her
dad had actually gone to prison on a white collar crime, and her platform was about reaching out to kids
whose parents had gone to prison, and a year later they end up getting married, so they met when she
competed and he judged her at Miss America, and just a few years ago it was a big TMZ story because
she got pregnant again, and he physically attacked her, and there was a video, and then they ended up
reconciling. That's a very strange Miss America connection to me, that he judged her, the creator of the
Bachelor. And it became a whole other story in its own right.
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah. There is a lot to unpack in that example alone. There's also a lot of that within the book too, of
just really interesting nooks and crannies that you provide throughout the book that are really like, nice
pockets of insight into these type of stories, of like these odd connections with these odd experiences.
Hilary Levey Friedman:
Gretchen Carlson is another one that a lot of people knew who she was from being on Fox and Friends.
And then of course she sues Roger Ailes. And it was not a thing that she put out there as much, that she
was a former Miss America, but so many people didn't know she'd been Miss America until the sexual
harassment story and I always thought that was very interesting.
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah! In terms of how you're working with pageants now, you talk about how they were rooted in baby
beauty pageants, and that these baby beauty pageants become and entry point for women moving from
the private sphere to the public sphere. Can you talk more about this transition?
Hilary Levey Friedman:
So, P.T. Barnum started a lot of different contests, and sometimes they were for chickens, and
sometimes they were for dogs, and sometimes they were for roses, and he was like, "Well, if I'm going
to do it for this other stuff, I should do this for women" and there was a lot of pushback in the 1850s
about this and it was one of the few times he just totally misread the cultural zeitgeist. But afterwards
he started this baby contest, some of which had started in the Midwest in particular at state fairs, and
those really took off. But of course, if you're going to be carrying infants on stage, mothers started
presenting them in public to be judged, and this became a way that it was okay for women to be
presenting themselves on stage and in public. So, in these baby contests becoming so popular, it had
turned into "Oh, some young men went to see the young mothers, not just the babies" and that helped
establish this transformation that women themselves would be able to appear on stage to compete.
Melinda Lewis:
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Do you have a sense of what those early baby pageants were like? Was it very simple, because I think
when we think about pageant there's so much emphasis at least as it's represented in popular culture
on spectacle and the outfits and the ways in which people are comported, is that the same way with
these early baby beauty pageants?
Hilary Levey Friedman:
Yeah, so it was way less focused on beauty, right? It was better baby contests, healthy babies, it wasn't
really until kind of, the late nineteenth century, early twentieth century where we saw baby parades
start developing. Like on boardwalks and in seaside towns, that there was more that this costume and
presentation thing. And if you think about how they started it in state faires, it was similar to presenting
the best pig or the best horse, we can raise the best baby.
Speaker 4:
(singing)
Melinda Lewis:
When do we put the babies away, and then slowly start with women's pageants?
Hilary Levey Friedman:
What's seen as the first swimsuit pageant was in the 1880s, started in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. So,
post-civil war, more acceptable for women to be out there in public, and you see over the next sort of
40 years, different towns in Galveston, Texas, things associated with festivals like Mardi Gras, that kind
of thing. All of that starts to grow for women and so in 1920, what ends up becoming the Miss America
pageant when they start organizing that and have the first event in 1921, it was all sort of leading up to
that particular moment.
Speaker 5:
(singing)
Melinda Lewis:
A large thread of this book is about the significance of opportunities that pageants provide those who
participate. And one of the strands is education, and scholarship opportunities, to me that gets
completely lost when we talk about pageants in the realm of popular culture. That is not really part of
Toddler and Tiaras, that doesn't show up in Miss Congeniality really.
Hilary Levey Friedman:
But it does though, because they're always like-
Speaker 6:
It is not a beauty pageant, it is a scholarship program.
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah, that's right.
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Hilary Levey Friedman:
So that's straight from Miss America. If we talk about the difference between Miss America and Miss
USA, it is a major difference, that the Miss USA winner gets cash winnings and other prizes, and the
biggest thing for the Miss America winner is getting this large tuition scholarship. So in the same way
that I think those women who competed at Miss America in 1921 were pioneers in a way, because what
woman was going to be out there competing and having your picture taken in a bathing suit, it's also
totally out there for women in the 40s and 50s to be like "I'm going to go to college or I'm going to
pursue a masters" or some other advanced degree.
Chris Harrison:
They encourage girls to set a goal and to work towards something and they encourage them to get an
education so they can really contribute to society. And I really think that people should encourage girls
like this to go on and give them the backing they need and give the pageant the backing it needs.
Chris Harrison:
Very good. Miss America, 1970 Pam Eldrid, our guest tonight on Dialing for Dollars.
Melinda Lewis:
So, of course that's totally changed today, right? You go on Instagram, you can find lots of examples of
very young girls sometimes, wearing bikinis and showing lots of skin and that sort of thing. Or, we know
that more women go to college, go to law school, go to medical school than men, right? So, that story's
just very much changed, but when you think back to the 20s and the 40s and the 50s, it was quite
different. And so I think that's a pretty amazing thing, talked about surprising connections, it surprises a
lot of people to know that Gloria Steinem competed in a beauty pageant in Ohio where she's from, and
she described it as a way for her to get out of small town Ohio. And so I think that's particularly telling
when there just weren't as many opportunities open to women, that particularly the women who chose
to compete were pushing those boundaries and did open up doors for a lot of others in ways that we
don't always recognize.
Speaker 7:
Hey, it's your mom, I have question about that podcast you do, are you on the Instagram or the Twitter
or the Facebook? If I have an idea for a podcast, how do I get in touch with you? Love you, Bye.
Melinda Lewis:
'Sup Mom! Yeah! So you can find us on all those things actually, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, just go to
popquestpod on any one of those and follow. If you want to send us ideas you can either go over to our
website and leave us a message at popqpodcast or you can get us directly at popq@dexel.edu. You can
actually find us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, I can help set it up when I get home, but then you have to
promise me to rate and review. All right, love you, bye!
Speaker 8:
(singing).
Melinda Lewis:
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There are a lot of references to movies and documentaries and television shows, I'm wondering for you,
what are some of the best representations? Is there a text that you're like "This actually pretty good,"
and what are the worst in terms of representing pageants and the complexity of pageant life?
Hilary Levey Friedman:
I think Miss Congeniality is not bad in it of itself.
Speaker 9:
Describe your perfect date.
Speaker 10:
That's a tough one. I'd have to say April 25th, because it's not too hot, not too cold. All you need is a
light jacket.
Hilary Levey Friedman:
One other fictional take that is often overlooked which is pretty amazing and has an amazing cast is
Drop Dead Gorgeous. That's really good.
Melinda Lewis:
I could talk about Drop Dead Gorgeous for ever and ever and ever.
Tammy Curry:
I'm Tammy Curry, and I'm signing up for the pageant because of scholarships and all. I run track and I'm
the new president of a Lutheran Sisterhood gun club.
Hilary Levey Friedman:
It's legitimately really funny and I think that it is also a film that is surprisingly clever in its criticism of
pageant, because it never really makes fun of those who want to participate, but it makes fun of the
structural elements.
Melinda Lewis:
Right, but also the ways in which she was like this is my way out.
Hilary Levey Friedman:
Yeah. This is how I get out of this small town that's trying to get me, I just want to tap dance my way out
of this. Yeah, I love that movie so much.
Speaker 11:
Now, it is with overwhelming pride that I introduce to you contestant number six, who is also the
president of her class, two years running, an honor roll student, and the new president of the Lutheran
Sisterhood gun club. Ladies and gentleman, Rebecca Ann Leeman!
Hilary Levey Friedman:
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There's an old HBO documentary, part of the America Undercover series, it's called Living Dolls that I
think is phenomenal about child beauty pageants.
Speaker 12:
And we're going to have to take a few weeks or a couple of months, or whatever it takes to get this kid
ready to go out in the five year old group. Or we're going to get our butt kicked. And that's the way it is.
Hilary Levey Friedman:
Toddlers and Tiaras I do not think is a very nuanced take, pretty much any of them. Especially when you
look at it in the context of it's a very formulaic show and pretty much all the episodes were very similar,
in terms of how they were structured. There's just not as much nuance.
Speaker 13:
It was one of the most talked about shows of the season.
Speaker 14:
Shake that booty good.
Speaker 13:
Well baby, they were just warming up. Get ready for the bedazzling premiere event.
Speaker 15:
How was your competition?
Speaker 14:
I don't care about them.
Speaker 13:
Toddlers and Tiaras, an all new season.
Melinda Lewis:
But I'm wondering what part of the nuance do you think they missed the most?
Hilary Levey Friedman:
Oh, well there's so much, but a lot of those pageants were staged for TV, they weren't regular events
perse. They'd be put together for the recording.
Speaker 16:
The competition has gotten really fierce.
Speaker 17:
What glitz pageants used to be with the fake tans and the fake hair and the teeth, that's just the
baseline now.
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Hilary Levey Friedman:
It wasn't authentic at all in that sense. They don't show all of it but I know they were trying to get people
upset and worked up for the talking heads after. So they were deliberately trying to egg people on.
Melinda Lewis:
When you're doing your research and you're interviewing parents and children, what did you find
coming through about why they were participating?
Hilary Levey Friedman:
One thing that was never really covered in the show was "Oh! How did you find out about your first
pageant you competed in? Tell me that story." And a bunch of moms that had done horse shoes when
they were younger and they drew some parallels doing cheerleading, doing figure skating, that sort of
thing.
Speaker 18:
I've spent four years in the military, and a lot of my discipline came from there but I think a lot of it came
from my father. He was also military, but he is very very strict and when I was younger, we competed in
horse shows, and I rode jumpers, and in order to do that, you have to be tougher than the horse.
Melinda Lewis:
You've been doing this research for a really long time, is there anything that came through that really
surprised you?
Hilary Levey Friedman:
One bit of research that I did, I went to the Smithsonian where this woman Lenora Slaughter who sort of
made over the pageant in the 30s and 40s, that's where her papers were held, and so I found a copy of
the original letter that she sent to the Miss America board of directors and in it she lays out all these
reasons why this would be a good thing, but then of course at the end of the day it came down to oh
and of course, she'll still want to get married and this will just help her make a better marriage, and be a
better wife. I was like oh my gosh, it's this totally feminist argument and then it's no no, this is actually
about getting married.
Speaker 19:
I can tell you this, I am a great girlfriend. And I'm going to be an awesome wife some day. So, yeah.
Hilary Levey Friedman:
Why do you have to wear a bikini and six inch heels in order to get a scholarship? And yet, lots of people
did it. And that's gone now and so that does eliminate one of these criticisms but you know, there's all
kinds of politicians or business people or Olympians, athletes, whatever it is, where you do a certain
thing to reach the larger goal and so I don't know, it's just what is considered acceptable and what isn't, I
don't know what that line is but it certainly changes over time.
Melinda Lewis:
Do you foresee a point where we no longer have pageants?
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Hilary Levey Friedman:
I don't think so, I don't think that we'll have Miss America in its current shape forever, or maybe even for
that much longer, but if you think of the bachelor and reality TV shows as a form of pageants I don't see
pageants going away. I think that beauty pageant culture is totally imbedded in life. You think about
Instagram today for younger people, and what that means, it's very much present.
Speaker 20:
(singing).
Melinda Lewis:
Not only did I tear through this in a matter of days, because I was just so compelled, I really appreciated
the refusal to further flatten a narrative that has been incredibly stereotyped to a degree that is unfair.
Hilary Levey Friedman:
I think that it's worthwhile digging in way too deep about these things, so I appreciate the opportunity
to talk about this with you.
Melinda Lewis:
Well thanks so much for sitting down with us Hilary.
Hilary Levey Friedman:
Awesome, thank you.
Melinda Lewis:
Pop, the question was researched and hosted by Dr. Melinda Lewis. Our theme music and episodes are
produced by Brian Kantorek, with additional audio production by Noah Levine. All of this was done
under the directorship of Erica Levi Zelinger, the deanship of Dr. Paula Marantz Cohen, and the Pennoni
Honors College of Drexel University.
Speaker 21:
(singing)