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Miss America protest

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Demonstration held at the Miss America 1968

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Also known asNo More Miss AmericaCauseWomen's liberationTargetMiss America 1969Organised byNew York Radical WomenParticipantsNew York Radical Women, Jeannette Rankin Brigade, National Organization for Women, American Civil Liberties Union

The Miss America protest was a demonstration held at the Miss America 1969 contest on September 7, 1968, attended by about 200 feminists and civil rights advocates. The feminist protest was organized by New York Radical Women and included putting symbolic feminine products into a "Freedom Trash Can" on the Atlantic City boardwalk, including bras, hairspray, makeup, girdles, corsets, false eyelashes, mops, and other items. The protesters also unfurled a large banner emblazoned with "Women's Liberation" inside the contest hall, drawing worldwide media attention to the Women's Liberation Movement.[1][2]

Reporter Lindsy Van Gelder drew an analogy between the feminist protesters throwing bras in the trash cans and Vietnam War protesters who burned their draft cards. The bra-burning trope was permanently attached to the event and became a catch-phrase of the feminist era.[3]

Origins<br>[edit]

The New York Radical Women was a group of women that had been active in the civil rights movement, the New Left, and antiwar movements.[4][failed verification] The group was organized in the fall of 1967 by former TV child star Robin Morgan, Carol Hanisch,[5] Shulamith Firestone,[6] and Pam Allen. They were searching for a suitable way to draw attention to their movement.

Hanisch said that she got the idea to target the Miss America contest after the group, including Morgan, Kathie Sarachild, Rosalyn Baxandall, Alix Kates Shulman, Patricia Mainardi, Irene Peslikis, and Ellen Willis, watched the film Schmeerguntz, which depicted how beauty standards oppressed women. It included clips of a Miss America parading in her swimsuit. "It got me thinking that protesting the pageant might be a good way to launch the movement into the public consciousness," Hanisch said. "Because up until this time, we hadn't done a lot of actions yet. We were a very small movement. It was kind of a gutsy thing to do. Miss America was this 'American pie' icon. Who would dare criticize this?"[7][8] The group decided to incorporate the techniques successfully used by the civil rights movement and adapt it to the new idea of women's liberation.[7]

Purpose<br>[edit]

In a letter on August 29, 1968, to the city mayor, Morgan requested a permit. She explained that the purpose of the protest was to demonstrate their objections to the pageant's focus on women's bodies over their brains, "on youth rather than maturity, and on commercialism rather than humanity".[9]

Organizers and participants<br>[edit]

In her letter requesting a permit, Morgan named the sponsor of the protest as "Women's Liberation", a "loose coalition of small groups and individuals".[9] She was the key organizer of the protest.[10] The advisory sponsor was Florynce Kennedy's Media Workshop, an activist group she founded in 1966 to protest the media's representation of African Americans. Other members of New York Radical Women were involved in protesting and documenting the event. Bev Grant, a musician and filmmaker / photographer with Newsreel who took part in the protests, also shot film and took photos of the protests and of the pageant itself. Peggy Dobbins, a performer and activist, created a life-sized Miss America puppet which she...