There She Is: Protesting
Feminists of the 1960s drew attention to women's liberation with their famous Miss America protest.
Members of New York Radical Women led a demonstration outside and, briefly, inside the Miss America pageant in 1968. NYRW detailed ten points of protest. Atop the list of criticism was what they termed "The Degrading Mindless-Boob-Girlie Symbol."
A Catchy Phrase
That phrase became a famous feminist encapsulation of the objectification of women. Robin Morgan, who wrote the Miss America protest materials and other women's liberation documents collectively with others in the movement, became a significant feminist writer and editor of books such as Sisterhood Is Powerful and essays such as "Goodbye to All That." The Miss America protesters criticized the beauty pageant for reducing women to objects and reflecting patriarchal society's emphasis on physical beauty and consumerism.
Objects and Symbols
The term "mindless boob" has long been useful to describe someone who is stupid or foolish, a simpleton with no autonomous relevance or intellectual value. The phrase "Degrading Mindless-Boob-Girlie Symbol" plays off of that meaning and the use of the word as slang for women's breasts.
As NYRW explained, oppressive beauty pageants epitomized the daily role all women were forced to play. A woman was judged on her beauty as a physical specimen, like an animal paraded down the runway at the county fair. "So are women in our society forced daily to compete for male approval," the feminists wrote. They even decided to crown a sheep as part of the protest, to symbolize this degrading syndrome.
"No More Miss America!"
Although there were additional reasons to protest Miss America, such as the racism, consumerism and militarism of the pageant, the "ludicrous" beauty standards were a chief concern and a pervasive aspect of society that the feminists rejected.