Read Online Being Miss America: Behind the Rhinestone Curtain (Discovering America) by Kate Shindle - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kate Shindle
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astonishing audience of sixty million watched the crowning of Miss America 1959, which worked out to two-thirds of the possible audience. By 1970, the audience grew to an estimated eighty million households, though the nationwide popularity of Miss America viewing parties at the time could actually translate into a figure closer to one hundred million. Regardless, the 1970 Miss America Pageant topped its own record of frequently being the most-watched show of the year by becoming the fifth most-watched show in all of television history. As Frank Deford noted, “Year in and year out there are onlytwo things in all of the United States that have evidenced the sustained popularity to compete with
Miss America
. One is the Academy Awards; the other is Bob Hope. Were Bob Hope to crown Miss America at halftime of the Super Bowl, the nation would crunch to a complete halt, since the figures prove conclusively that every man, woman, and child in the United States of America would be watching television at that moment.”
The Miss America telecast in those early years was such a smashing success that it became appointment television for families across the country. It was wholesome enough to be the one program per year that little girls were allowed to stay up late for, but also—even if it was not actually the least bit risqué—provided enough eye candy for the man of the house to shrug his shoulders and watch from his recliner.
For several years, it seemed to be enough for a contestant to simply show up, win the crown, and ride the resulting momentum until she relinquished the title to the next winner. Miss America was Miss America was Miss America. She became famous because the pageant told us she was the most deserving; she remained a draw in communities across the country because she was famous. It was a brilliantly simple equation, to the point that it was an essentially straight line to the subsequent deterioration of Miss America’s identity. Her celebrity was not carefully plotted in the conference rooms of high-ranking executives. It was, more or less, an accident of sudden and widespread exposure. This, presumably, was awesome at the time. But lacking a strategy to move ahead—or any recognition of how rapidly America would evolve over the coming decades—the pageant was inevitably going to get stuck. Stuck with a self-created fame that—lacking a more significant message than “She’s the one!”—would eventually become less and less interesting to the public.
It was this very success that would eventually paralyze the pageant, a phenomenon that continues even now. Decades later, facing ratings challenges that simply would not be conquered, Miss America would swing wildly back and forth between trying to copy the trends of the moment and trying to recapture the innocence of the pageant’s younger days. To do that, of course, was and is a fool’s errand; it’s impossible to replicate the pageants of those early years. Among Miss America’s biggest leadership issues (in the absence of a nation-sized time machine) is the apparent crisis over whether to turn the clock back or forward. Sadly, since the leadership can’t ever quite seem to decide which path will be more effective (and don’t seem to have the patience to actually sit down, craft a new corporate identity, and give it a few years to develop), the telecast tends to jerk erratically back and forth. Classic Miss America. Glamorous Miss America. Hip Miss America. Innocent Miss America. Bombshell Miss America. Perhaps that’s a product of the ground the American female identity has covered since 1955; while the aforementioned Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, and Katharine Hepburn (for starters) successfully negotiated bombshell innocence, hipness, and old-school classic glamour, most women define themselves within a narrower identity. Once the pageant’s television infancy set up Miss America as someone who could be all things to all people, it was
Miss America
. One is the Academy Awards; the other is Bob Hope. Were Bob Hope to crown Miss America at halftime of the Super Bowl, the nation would crunch to a complete halt, since the figures prove conclusively that every man, woman, and child in the United States of America would be watching television at that moment.”
The Miss America telecast in those early years was such a smashing success that it became appointment television for families across the country. It was wholesome enough to be the one program per year that little girls were allowed to stay up late for, but also—even if it was not actually the least bit risqué—provided enough eye candy for the man of the house to shrug his shoulders and watch from his recliner.
For several years, it seemed to be enough for a contestant to simply show up, win the crown, and ride the resulting momentum until she relinquished the title to the next winner. Miss America was Miss America was Miss America. She became famous because the pageant told us she was the most deserving; she remained a draw in communities across the country because she was famous. It was a brilliantly simple equation, to the point that it was an essentially straight line to the subsequent deterioration of Miss America’s identity. Her celebrity was not carefully plotted in the conference rooms of high-ranking executives. It was, more or less, an accident of sudden and widespread exposure. This, presumably, was awesome at the time. But lacking a strategy to move ahead—or any recognition of how rapidly America would evolve over the coming decades—the pageant was inevitably going to get stuck. Stuck with a self-created fame that—lacking a more significant message than “She’s the one!”—would eventually become less and less interesting to the public.
It was this very success that would eventually paralyze the pageant, a phenomenon that continues even now. Decades later, facing ratings challenges that simply would not be conquered, Miss America would swing wildly back and forth between trying to copy the trends of the moment and trying to recapture the innocence of the pageant’s younger days. To do that, of course, was and is a fool’s errand; it’s impossible to replicate the pageants of those early years. Among Miss America’s biggest leadership issues (in the absence of a nation-sized time machine) is the apparent crisis over whether to turn the clock back or forward. Sadly, since the leadership can’t ever quite seem to decide which path will be more effective (and don’t seem to have the patience to actually sit down, craft a new corporate identity, and give it a few years to develop), the telecast tends to jerk erratically back and forth. Classic Miss America. Glamorous Miss America. Hip Miss America. Innocent Miss America. Bombshell Miss America. Perhaps that’s a product of the ground the American female identity has covered since 1955; while the aforementioned Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, and Katharine Hepburn (for starters) successfully negotiated bombshell innocence, hipness, and old-school classic glamour, most women define themselves within a narrower identity. Once the pageant’s television infancy set up Miss America as someone who could be all things to all people, it was
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