'Racism With Roses'

In 1968, women's liberation groups led by New York Radical Women protested the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Among the complaints about the beauty pageant was that Miss America was a racist contest. Publicity materials about the Miss America protest labeled the pageant "Racism with Roses."

Miss White America?

The women's liberation groups pointed out that in more than 40 years since the dawn of Miss America in 1921, the pageant had never had a black finalist. They also noted that there had been no winners who were Puerto Rican, Mexican-American, Hawaiian or Alaskan. The "true Miss America," the feminist protesters said, would be an American Indian.

When Privileged Males Set the Standards

Among the goals of the women's liberation movement was the analysis of oppression in society. Feminist theorists studied how oppression based on sex related to oppression based on race. In particular, socialist feminism and ecofemnism both sought to change the unjust practices of patriarchal society, including sex or gender discrimination, racism, poverty and environmental injustice.

Women's liberation recognized that the historical power structures of society gave a privileged place to white males, at the expense of all other groups. The women who protested at the Miss America pageant viewed the parading and judging of women according to traditional standards of "femininity" or "beauty" as another example of male supremacy. They connected the injustice of objectification to the lack of racial diversity in the pageant. In the 1930s and 1940s there had even been an official pageant rule that Miss America contestants must be "of the white race."

Diversity at Last

In 1976, Deborah Lipford became the first African-American top 10 semi-finalist in the Miss America pageant. In 1983, Vanessa Williams won the pageant to become Miss America 1984, the first black Miss America. She later resigned her crown because of a nude photos scandal, and runner-up Suzette Charles became the second African-American to be Miss America. In 2000, Angela Perez Baraquio became the first Asian-American Miss America. Some critics have argued that even as the Miss America pageant became more diverse at the end of the 20th century, it continued to idealize its traditional beauty image of white women.