Bibliograph

Being Miss America, behind the rhinestone curtain, Kate Shindle

Type

Label

Being Miss America, behind the rhinestone curtain, Kate Shindle

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Illustrations

platesillustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Being Miss America

Nature of contents

bibliography

Responsibility statement

Kate Shindle

Series statement

Discovering America

Sub title

behind the rhinestone curtain

Summary

In Being Miss America, Kate Shindle interweaves an engrossing, witty memoir of her year as Miss America 1998 with a fascinating and insightful history of the pageant. She explores what it means to take on the mantle of America's "ideal," especially considering the evolution of the American female identity since the pageant's inception. Shindle profiles winners and organization leaders and recounts important moments in the pageant's story, with a special focus on Miss America's iconoclasts, including Bess Myerson (1945), the only Jewish Miss America; Yolande Betbeze (1951), who crusaded against the pageant's pinup image; and Kaye Lani Rae Rafko (1987), a working-class woman from Michigan who wanted to merge her famous title with her work as an oncology nurse. Shindle's own account of her work as an AIDS activist--and finding ways to circumvent the "gown and crown" stereotypes of Miss America in order to talk honestly with high school students about safer sex--illuminates both the challenges and the opportunities that keep young women competing to become Miss America

Table Of Contents

Part One. Flappers and scholars and crowns, oh my! -- Part Two. Women on top -- Part Three. The ugly pageant

Target audience

adult

Classification