Bittersweet Infamy - #27 - Dethroned

Episode Date: September 19, 2021

Taylor tells Josie about the first Black Miss America, Vanessa Williams, and the turbulent history of the Miss America pageant. Plus: the infamous policies of Texas governor Greg Abbott.

Hi, Taylor here. We ended up having a lot to discuss this week, so we hope you enjoy this super-sized episode. Unfortunately, there's also a lot of super gnarly racism, homophobia, and misogyny. This is also a story about a young woman's nude photos being made public without her consent. Parts of this episode may be upsetting to some listeners. With that out of the way, here's episode 27, Dethroned. Thanks for listening. You're super.

Welcome to Bittersweet Infamy. I'm Josie Mitchell. I'm Taylor Basso. On this podcast, we tell the stories that live on in infamy. The shocking, the unbelievable, and the unforgettable. The truth may be bitter, but the stories are always sweet. Hey, Taylor. Hey, Josie.

I heard you're going back to school. How do you feel about that? It's true. To be clear, you're an instructor, yeah? I'm going to be an instructor at the public university here in Houston, and so that means as a public institution, we thank you to Mr. Greg Abbott over in the governor's mansion. We as a university cannot mandate vaccines, nor can we mandate masks on campus. But we also have to hold a certain amount of in-person classes, too.

So that's amazing. Yeah, it kind of feels like we're going to just roll the dice, and if people get sick, then we go back online, which doesn't feel very wise. No, it feels like that was a lot of the mentality that people kind of had at the very, very, very beginning of it before it was even a pandemic, when they were like, oh, someone will just, we'll just deal with it when people get it, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And I feel like we're pretty far past that at this point.

We should be. We should be, especially because this last week, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, tested positive for COVID. Yes, I had heard about this. He had a breakthrough case. He's fully vaccinated. Oh, that's hard. He was vaccinated in fucking December.

Yeah. Okay, but I mean, mixed emotions on that. I'm not rooting for anyone to get COVID. No, no, but it feels at one point, and it's kind of like when Trump got COVID, my thought was like, oh my gosh, maybe he'll like kind of pay attention a little bit more and like take it seriously. And then that didn't happen. So cool.

You know, it's not the COVID that we know. It's this new Delta, which is not, well, according to its standards, it's doing real hot here in Texas. Like it is moving and grooving through unvaccinated communities and mutating and getting stronger. So in the event, if I contract COVID this fall, because I have to be around a large number of people for my job, then I want to blame Greg Abbott. So in order to really blame him, I feel like we should get to know him a little bit.

Not Greg Abbott. Okay, lay it on me. I feel like there are so many instances within Greg Abbott's biography of like bittersweet bullshit that is just like, it's, I can't even. Wow, I got it. This is, listen, I didn't realize I was talking to Samantha B over here. My goodness. I'm going to stand for this one.

I'm not behind a desk. So Gregory Wayne Abbott. Okay. Born November 13th. The same days as YF actually, different year of the same day. He was born 1957 in Wichita Falls, Texas. He's of English descent. Okay.

He lived all around Texas. They lived in Longview and then they lived in East Texas for a little bit too. He was on the track team in high school. He was a national honor society member. He was voted in the yearbook as most likely to succeed. Did you win any high school superlatives? No, I did not. I did not.

Neither did I. Kind of okay, but bummed okay. It was roller coaster. It would be so flattering in a teenager's mind to be recognized as the most anything. Yes, you know, exactly. Yeah. At a time when you're desperately trying to assert your personality and your identity, you can get nice as thighs in the yearbook and be like,

my thing is I have really nice eyes. But maybe we can have our own superlatives. Like the most likely not to be voted is superlatives. It's a tie again, everybody. So anyway, our buddy Grego, most likely to succeed. He got a bachelor of business administration from the University of Austin at Texas, where he met his now, his then and now wife, Cecilia Filaum. And then he went on to get a law degree at Vanderbilt in Tennessee.

Most interestingly, I find is this little saga in 84. So he's 26 years old. He is a runner, right? He's going out for a run after a storm. And he has a branch of this huge live oak fall on him. Yes, he is paralyzed below the waist. Goodness. Because of this accident.

Oh, God, life is so precarious. So strange. He had two steel rods implanted in his spine, and he had to go through extensive rehabilitation at Hermann Memorial Hospital here in Houston. And he has been in a wheelchair ever since. Okay. He sued the homeowner and a tree service, which is responsible for these trees.

And he resulted in an insurance settlement where he has provided a lump sum payment every three years until 2022. So he's still getting payments. So that's three every three years he gets a lump sum. And then along with monthly payments for life. Okay. I don't know how those how those break apart. But but the monthly payments, I do know that the monthly payments are $14,000 a month.

Okay. And Abbott says that he relies on that money to help pay for the three decades that he's had of medical expenses and other costs that will continue. Yeah, sure. Okay. So he has a lot of wackadoo stances that are super fun. I'll start with guns because who doesn't like to start with guns? So he staunchly opposes gun control legislation.

Okay. So much so that in 2013, he criticized legislation in New York, not his fucking state, about the expanding laws against assault weapons. He has political campaign placed internet ads within Albany and Manhattan zip codes. What? You know, you can do that with yeah. Suggesting that New York gun owners should move to Texas. One ad read is Gov Como looking to take your guns.

And the other ad read wanted law abiding New York gun owners looking for lower taxes and greater opportunity. And they would send them all to Texas. He has reported to have said move for these citizens to Texas would enable them to keep more of what you earn and use some of that extra money to buy more ammo. Great. One that is near and dear to my heart. Thank you, Greg Abbott is the 2015 campus carry law where it is you're allowed to carry

a concealed weapon on a higher education. Fuck off. That's crazy. Why? I have to put this shit in my syllabus. Yeah. Abbott signed a bill into law that allowed Texans to carry guns without a fucking license. What?

Yeah, you don't need a license. What? That's a really bad idea. Also scary. He tried to ban sex toys from the state of Texas. Oh my god. What? There is nothing in there's probably something in the Bible.

Listen, I'm not again I've said before I'm not your Bible guy. There was a big campaign for this on or like like a protest against this on UT Austin campus where students would carry around like dildos and vibrators visibly in their backpacks. Just being like what I can carry a gun. Why can't I fucking carry this? That's funny. It's pretty dope. Just tuck a just tuck like a big floppy dong in like a water bottle in the side of your bag.

That's fun. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, your clean canteen, your big old. Your your pocket posts in the same. Yeah, a big time. When it came to the winter storm, which I chronicled earlier on our podcast here. Yes, episode 10, The Tickle King. Wow.

You can't stomp me on this show. You can't stomp me. You know all the trivia on your own show. I do, I do. So about the whole, you know, the whole system, the grid going offline and Texans being cold and dying. Abbott said, oh God, it just shows you that fossil fuel is necessary. That's frustrating.

This is probably my my favorite of a of a little abotism here. Okay. So remember how I mentioned how unfortunately Abbott was paralyzed by a fallen branch in a freak accident. But he's receiving benefits from the homeowner and you know insurance and the tree company to help offset all those medical costs. Abbott has backed legislation that limits punitive damages stemming from non economic losses and non economic damages and medical malpractice cases.

The very thing he benefits from. And that helps him pay for the expensive medical care that he requires because of this freak accident. He limits that to other Texans. Does this legislation affect the payments that he's already receiving or is that done and dusted? No, I think that's done and dusted. Yeah, I wouldn't be retroactive.

Okay, so that's kind of what I'm wondering. My goodness. So that's that's pretty evil. Yeah. And then we get to you know where a lot of American governors just really shine is with COVID in March of 2021. Abbott lifted all COVID restrictions in Texas. And then shortly after he signed an executive order banning state agencies and corporations

that take public funding. So any you know library funded anything at all universities. Yeah, from requiring proof of vaccination against COVID. Yeah, so no none of that. And then may of this year another executive order banning mask mandates and public schools and government entities. I understand your frustration. I understand why you feel the need to put this gentleman on blast.

Yeah. And then when he contracted COVID-19 he was eligible for this like the monoclonal antibody treatment like that you know like the gnarly treatment. I don't know if that's the one that that Trump got. I think his was like steroid thing. Right. But you know like the highest the highest of COVID treatment. Yeah, it's it's yeah.

As of yesterday Abbott has tested negative. King of Mazel Tov. Mazel Tov good for you. It's hard I don't think that people should be making the laws who aren't infected by them. Other than I mean obviously he's affected by them in the sense that he's kind of gotten COVID in this kind of strange breakthrough case. But yeah there's kind of a lot of hypocrisy to getting vaccinated but pandering to your base that doesn't want vaccines.

And then and Texas is like there's a lot of different kinds of people in Texas. There's a lot of there's a lot there's poverty in Texas. There's very there's a lot of wealth in Texas you know what I mean. Yeah. So like these kind of one size fits all laws that like if you get any disease it's better if you're rich. I will be wearing a mask in class. I'll be wearing it the whole time that I'm on campus.

So wear your masks as much as you can folks. And get a cute mask get a little kitty mask get a little bear mask get vaccinated flowers and vaccinated. So I had to unload on Greg Abbott like that. No it's all good. You are frustrated. You used your platform for protest. Which is relevant to my story today. Don't.

Josie today I bring you a quintessentially American story. Possibly the most American story. Well okay I'll be the judge of that. Canadian. Actually you have a probably better idea but okay continue. Hear me out. Yes. Who is more American than Miss America.

Fact. Fact. What are you bringing me. Get your crown out. Total happy coincidence the pageant is celebrating its 100th year this September. Oh my G.B. Which I did not know when I started digging into the story. Um so I lucked into a very appropriate time to dig through its history.

Love it love it. What do you know about Miss America. I know that it is the largest uh um scholarship for women in the United States. Yes although there was a bit of controversy around that number. John Oliver did a segment on it about. Oh yeah. I guess it would be almost 10 years ago I think it was like 2014. Maybe I don't know off the top of my head.

It was one of his earlier ones. Yeah and he uh he pointed out that the way they were claiming something like 45 million or something like that in scholarships every year but the only way it worked out is if you like took the number of contestants and multiplied them by every possible scholarship they could win assuming that they all won them all and were going to like multiple universities at the same time. So since then they've kind of scaled that number back to something like three million which is still very large and still possibly I think they still claim largest in the world. Yeah okay okay.

It's significantly less than originally advertised. Yeah I know that I don't know I know a lot of the stereotypes that it's like southern. Yep and pageant moms are very intense and mean and little girls wear a lot of makeup and you have to like put hairspray on your butt and stuff and I'm just pulling a lot from drop dead gorgeous and miscommunication. Yeah no as you should. Well please do because this is part of what really struck me as I dug my teeth into this is this is a we have a hundred years of cultural baggage around this ridiculous enterprise right.

It's people standing on stage you judge them for their beauty you judge them for how they look in a swimsuit then they have to come and give like they have to do what I do every night which is solve a world's problem in 20 seconds. Right yeah it's it's so it's such a strange thing this beauty pageant but like you say we have all of this we have all of these preconceptions about who are the kind of women who enter this what are their family lives like what do they look like etc right. Oh totally and it perpetuates a very like male gazey view of women and not a very expansive idea of femininity.

It's a very like you know yeah I don't I mean I don't even know if it's kind of a white femininity but I think that certainly influences it in big ways. Can you name any kind of famous Miss America contestants? Not one. Sandra Bullock. So do you do you want a little bit of trivia? Prepare me for that big world out there. For September then their hundredth anniversary I need to wow some people.

Exactly you need to get out there Miss uh I guess you would you go as Miss California or Miss Texas? Oh I don't think I could I don't think I could handle Miss Texas. There was a lot of expectation there. Do you know who is the who is the first black Miss America? Um I do not know. It was a multi hyphenate singer actor star Vanessa Williams. Really?

That's dope. Yeah I know it's really cool. Good for her. Do you know who was the first Miss America to be forced to resign her crown? Oh no. It was Vanessa Williams. Oh shit balls why? Because Penthouse Magazine published nude photographs of her.

Oh that excludes you from being Miss America? Josie this is the story of the first black Miss America, Vanessa Williams. Cool. Good one. Dope. So you don't know the story. Dope. I don't know this story at all obviously.

All I know is the movies. You won't this is I'm gonna give you. Why don't they make this a movie? Just before I start I'm gonna be because I do nothing for this podcast in half measures I am gonna be digging through 100 years of Miss America and giving you the whole story as much as I can. So part and parcel it's also gonna be a lot of reflection on racism in the pageant's history, on misogyny obviously prolific around the entire conversation around beauty pageants. There's also gonna be some homophobia like

the reason that I say this is because there were actually like passages that I wrestled with whether to include them or not here and in the end I chose not to because one I didn't want to kind of propagate the harm of the sentiments but two more selfishly I thought it would feel really gnarly coming out of my mouth and I didn't want to say it but yeah no I get that but that doesn't mean like throughout this story there are various pretty ugly sentiments that I didn't excise because they're important in telling the story um yeah so just be stay monitoring yourself and stay sweet we love you okay it's the main sources that I used were threefold the main sources that I used were I watched a documentary uh called I think it's just called Miss America

it was aired as part of pbs's documentary series American experience okay I used my public library card if you have a participating it's hard to find online but if you have a participating public library card you can access this documentary for free through canopy canopy love it I listened to not the entirety but the main relevant content uh from Vanessa Williams own book that she wrote with her mother Helen Williams it's called you have no idea oh whoa I uh I cashed in my uh free audible trial and I got to to two free audiobooks so I listened to Vanessa Williams and what I must say is her exceptionally sexy reading voice uh a little bit of a growl uh she kind of she told me her story and then um and Helen Helen chips in

on the parts that Helen wrote she's she's reading for her own parts cute that's really it's a nice way to do a memoir with your mom right yeah I also listened to an audiobook uh of a book by Margo Mifflin it's called Looking for Miss America and if you are at all interested in anything that comes up as we talk today this book has everything it interrogates the pageant and its participants from every conceivable angle class race everything yeah it tells the story of like other pageants that sprung up as responses to miss america that represented kind of the minority communities that weren't represented in og miss america and it also does the work of telling the stories a very disparate very often forgotten or misunderstood women like I've learned the

ins and outs of like 12 or 13 miss america winners from that book and like what they stood for afterwards and how their life did or didn't go the way that they expected or whatever it was right yeah this is a really good book a very packed packed packed packed full of stuff mm-hmm so with all of that out of the way the first documented pageant took place in 1880 uh miss united states took place in rohoboth beach delaware beautiful rohoboth beach yes home of what i imagine are some very large crabs uh uh really contestants were judged on face feet hands hair poise and costume i'm sorry face feet hands yeah and in a very the the panel by the way included thomas edison

so this this like face feet hands hair what are the exact measurements of your throat kind of all of this stuff like they really busted out the little measuring tape for this whoa they went like darwinian on it there's a real connection it seems like and margo mifflin posits in her book between the nascent american eugenics movement and a big pageant and so basically the idea of eugenics for those who aren't familiar is the idea that you can breed the perfect human and that you should be reducing undesirable traits in the gene pool what that often meant in practice was like medicalized racism right yeah so the contests they would have the pageants they would have

included better baby contests and fitter family contests and these emphasized quote heredity in the name of better breeding and building larger families um and the idea was that this would combat urbanization and immigration which were seen as threats to the ideal white nuclear family oh god okay as for the miss america pageant itself so what we call miss america its roots can be found in 1920 so white women have just gotten the vote so suffrage right right yeah they're increasingly appearing in the labor force they're pursuing higher education against that backdrop on september 25th 1920 an event was held in atlantic city new jersey so this is my makeup for insulting atlantic city a little while back i'm doing an atlantic city sorry

it was called the fall frolic the goal was to drive business to the city's iconic boardwalk after labor day all right yeah summer has summer is closed but we still got some nice weather wearing their white yeah yeah paraphrasing from pbs the event featured 350 gaily decorated rolling wicker chairs pushed along the parade route by 350 men however the main attractions were the young maidens who sat in the rolling chairs headed by maiden they were young maidens and they were preceded by miss earnestine chromona who is dressed in a flowing white robe and represented peace after the opening ceremony at million dollar pier the contestants are escorted to a float by black residents dressed as slaves this is yeah this is the only way that african

americans will participate in miss america for the next 50 years uh yeah so next year 1921 miss america started in earnest so the the winner was now well the winner wouldn't be called that until 1922 instead a hundred thousand people gathered at atlantic city boardwalk to watch six intercity beauties selected through photo contests and local newspapers compete to be crowned as the golden mermaid the golden which i think is much cooler yeah yeah bring that should you really be miss america or like the golden mermaid the golden mermaid today the event was two days long and featured a beachfront parade called the bathers review which featured all of the young women in the latest in swimwear oh which was like down to your fucking ankles right or below the knee it was a weird mix

because the bathing suits needed to be compelling enough not only to sway the judges but also the public because the public gets a 50 voting stake and i think they literally vote by crowd cheers like that's what we're talking about wow yeah but it couldn't be too racy because there are these there are decency laws at this point around bathing costumes yeah so they have in this um group of censors who are measuring the length of every suit with great scrutiny so this tension between sexuality and propriety serves as a microcosm for many of the tensions that would affect the pageant over the next century yeah big time yeah okay the runaway winner of the first contest was a 16 year old mary pickford lookalike named margaret gorman of

washington dc said the new york times margaret gorman represents the kind of womanhood america needs strong red-blooded able to shoulder the responsibilities of homemaking and motherhood it is in her type that the hope of the country rests wow that must feel really good when you're 16 and you hear that you know this is the kind of strong childbearing breeding that we need to usher forth for the next generation of america stop you will make a girl blush oh my gosh uh the contest was a hit and it was renewed for the entire decade oh wow they decided then like let's get another 10 in here yeah fuck it this is so let's keep let's keep the ball rolling because it was like it was a huge hit by 1926 the pageant was so

notorious that that year's winner norma smallwood made more money than babe ruth or the president whoa whoa okay notorious meaning like like what do you mean notorious well it's it's still got a veneer of sleaze about it at this point i think like it's not okay it's not like the grandmas are like that's inappropriate it's not the very buttoned up kind of more conservative affair that it would become as it as it matured it was very much like come and hoot and holler at some sexy dames on the boardwalk okay maiden the swimsuits will be barely there but they will be very much there because it's 1926 right okay yeah okay okay but on 26 standards okay norma smallwood's racking up money she demands a fee to return and crown her successor

but when that doesn't work out she bales in the middle of the ceremony it just leaves the mcs to pick up the slack yeah girl um unbeknownst to judges smallwood was part Cherokee this is an oversight that flew in the face of the unwritten rule that pageant winners must be white and it was it was unwritten or was written it was understood at this point it wasn't formally written into the the pageants like bylaws or anything but it was understood that this was a pageant for white women okay throughout the history of miss america alternative pageants have used similar models to crown winners from non-white communities princess america for example crowned native american women the winner would appear in buckskin and beads alongside king neptune in the miss america

parade oh good little cameo gross cool another pageant called national golden brown beauty popped up in 1925 hosted by the golden brown chemical company a provider of cosmetics for black women its contestants received diamond rings with the winner josephine legged of louisiana receiving a new car hey josephine drive up round there's always a sting in the tail oh god golden brown was a skin bleaching product oh all the competitors were light skinned and the company's ceo madame meany high tower turned out to be a fictional creation by invented by white marketers wait what what what yeah that's a whole thing right there damn yeah they so they basically were like tried to create like a faux madame cj walker to to tether this like skin bleaching

product to i know it's a nightmare so this uh was obviously not the only black beauty pageant black pageants had existed since the 1890s as what mergo mifflin calls non-confrontational ways to express black pride it wasn't until after world war two that activists pushed to integrate traditionally white beauty pageants um with a first notable victory coming in 1948 when a black brooklyn college student named felon reporter was named as new york city's miss subways okay so miss subways as far as i can tell miss subways is like you get to have your face like on the subway like in the little you know the little subway ads miss subways gets a little like a little um cute three-quarter profile headshot where she's looking all glam and pretty and then

they tell you a little bit about miss subways like this is felon reporter she's miss subways she likes to read this that and the other she's doing this etc i'm just i keep thinking in the sandwich but yeah miss miss subway is a very different pageant in 2021 i grant you right uh in the late 1920s critics of public immorality including women's groups and religious organizations pressured the chamber of commerce to shut down the miss america pageant arguing that it endangered youthful morals oh yeah yeah but in the 1930s the depression hit and the depression won the day and so the pageant was brought back to turn some money in a time when it was desperately needed in october 1935 17 year old henryetta lever suffers her own version of the venessa william

scandal uh when a mere month into her reign as miss america a sculptor unveiled a statue of the young woman in the nude lever swore that when she posed for the sculpture she wore a bathing suit and her grandmother was present to monitor the situation okay yeah wow okay the press coverage was brutal although notably lever was not asked to resign the crowd okay so unlike unlike venessa williams around this time a woman named lanora slaughter took over the reins of miss america which had traditionally been owned by men okay she seems like a real personality this one okay very like i'm lanora slaughter charmed i'm sure like very that okay she's a 29 year old southern baptist described as an iron fist in a velvet glove okay she sought to eliminate scandal from

the competition and attract a better class of contestants okay problematic okay it keeps getting problematic listen i keep wanting to i have to say i keep wanting to like find heroes in it in the story and i'm like but she's gonna be horrible i know it like i love the velvet fist but no you're looking for a young woman who was miss new york 1983 her name was venessa williams and she will be appearing in this story okay thank you no prod so just hang in there hang in there a little highlighter on her okay so among lanora slaughter's innovations she added a talent segment to promote a well-rounded character okay so no longer just the feet hands and face it's this is to accompany the evening wear and swimsuit competitions and at the suggestion of miss america 1944 miss gene barthel who was a

college student they added a five thousand dollar scholarship which began the pageants transformation into the scholarship program that you were talking about earlier all right all right okay swimsuits were de-emphasized two pieces were banned and the contestants were now crowned while wearing evening gowns oh they were crowned it was all fucking they had on the evening gown for a hot second and then after that was like whip your yabos out like that's kind of what it was okay she also updated the rules dictating that all contestants would be chaperoned while competing subject to a curfew barred from drinking or smoking and would enjoy no private visits with men even their fathers all right even their father she's really uh she's really implementing like

combat rules on the pageant yeah yeah straight and narrow yeah finally slaughter added the now infamous rule seven contestants must be in good health and of the white race okay so previously it hadn't been written down but now yes previously it was understood but not codified now it is written into the pageant rules yeah but how do you even define white but well okay good what this meant in actual practice wasn't no non-white contestants it was specifically no black contestants in 1948 the uh south dakota black hills native americans wrote to slaughter challenging the rule she responded that they were welcome to participate and that only black women weren't allowed claiming it was impossible to evaluate their beauty against the white race

yeah shit so very very overtly racist anti-black sentiments to this rule yeah yeah the this rule was formally revoked in 1950 although no black contestants would walk the stage until miss iowa 1970 Cheryl brown wow wow wait when was rule number seven implemented originally i don't have an exact date for you unfortunately but it would have been late 30s early 40s i believe okay okay that's a long time as america entered the 40s it also entered the second world war which saw most large public events get shut down linora slaughter however was able to convince the government that the pageant should continue essential services okay huh morale morale for the boys here's a quote from linora slaughter miss america

is emblematic of the nation's spirit and that spirit continues through war and peace good times and bad in the end uncle sam granted permission on the condition that the winner used her and you found fame to sell war bonds okay okay uh which was apparently wildly successful miss america cleared out a lot of war bonds apparently yeah i feel like i don't know that's kind of ringing a very distant bell like i've seen images or something like that of of that in 1945 uh best mierson competed as miss new york the american-born daughter of russian jewish immigrants mierson grew up in the broncs giving piano lessons and wanted to go to grad school to learn how to conduct music mierson was beautiful like holy shit one of the most

stunning women i've ever seen in my entire life wow she looks like a like i'm literally like you're a famous film star aren't you she's kicks in that mid-atlantic accent for you right away yes darling i am um also equally importantly she's intelligent and talented so she had all these things going for her she's still imperfect in the eyes of linora slaughter who encouraged her to change her name to something a little waspier uh beth merrick in order to improve her chances in the contest her contest that she runs right yes okay mierson who had no aspirations towards a showbiz career politely told slaughter to fuck off and won the whole contest yeah girl destroying her competitors in both the swimsuit and talent competitions whoa what was her talent

she played the piano oh duh okay yeah her victory as the first and to this day only jewish miss america was especially poignant in 1945 as the atrocities of the holocaust emerged yeah oh mierson recalls being approached by former concentration camp inmates with numbers tattooed on their arms saying you have to win you have to show the world that we're not ugly don't need to be disposed of no pressure no pressure for sure i think it also goes to show and apparently when she won it was all fucking mausoleum from the crowd and jewish people hug in each other like it they were yeah it was huge and so i think it just shows one of like another one of the interesting tensions of this pageant is that like

for certain communities this does pose representation or integration or legitimization or whatever it is and then it's also like survival survival it's also like a potential path upwards for people who might not have access to these scholarships any other way yeah gloria steinem did a fucking pageant where she had to stand in a swimsuit on a keg and when she was asked about it she was like it seemed like a good way to escape a small town yeah you know yeah that's right i forgot that she competed in pageants sadly myerson's win did not cure the world of antisemitism none of the pageant sponsors wanted a jewish girl with posing with their products oh fuck you yeah she was unable to find hotels that would allow her to stay

jesus her post pageant engagements dried up quickly and mostly consisted of drunks demanding she play the piano in her bathing suit based on these experiences best toured public venues speaking on anti-racism and antisemitism issues good girl in a program entitled are you ready for it you can't be beautiful and hate that's the last time we'll stop in with with best myerson but she has a really interesting story um after this she involves she ends up getting involved in um civic politics she ends up getting involved in this like wire fraud scandal she has all these like man issues it's it's she's a really interesting person complicated she's from where she was from new york new york the broncs okay the broncs okay and so she's doing like new

york politics yeah wow okay look her up in 1949 miss alabama yoland bet bees was ready to take the world by storm said lanora slaughter yoland was the sexiest most glamorous thing i'd ever laid eyes on she said sexiest oh yeah yoland is a sex kitten perper i just didn't expect slaughter to to sex out even lanora slaughter can't deny this woman's sex appeal i gotcha i gotcha unfortunately bet bees wasn't the pliable young woman pageant brass might have preferred upon winning miss america she flatly told sponsor katalina swimmer that she would not be touring middle america department stores in their swimsuits as they demanded oh good for her incensed katalina pulled their sponsorship from the pageant and started their own pageant miss usa

what the i had no idea this is what i'm here to tell you about baby i'm here to give you all the tell me all of them holy fucking shit miss usa is i believe i don't know if it always was but it is now part of the same katal um global organization that has miss teen usa miss universe all of these kind of feeder pageants from different countries whatever um yeah very famously owned uh i don't think anymore but very famously owned for a long period of time by donald trump you know right yeah okay it was the uh alternative to miss america that for better or worse was a bit more up front about dealing in sex an oath-spoken activist yolan bet bees would prove a thorn in the pageant side as the years went on in the 60s she was invited to atlantic city for a televised reunion with

other previous winners why would i want to do that she replied you're not miss america y'all are miss white christian yolan bet bees another one who sounds really interesting has a really interesting story after this norma small with the Cherokee winner she yeah she also has a really interesting post pageant story she ended up married to this guy who like cure this millionaire who curated native american artifacts which feels weird that feels wrong that feels that feels weird uncomfortable in the bedroom yep in uh on september 11th 1954 okay so everything's fine the pageant took the next big step in its evolution when it was televised for the first time on abc beaming into uh i think it's something like 23 million they got like they got some ungodly

amount of all the tv's that could be tuned into something because it's yeah 54 there's only three channels yeah yeah yeah exactly by the late 1950s networks and sponsors competed over the rights to the contest with over 200 000 worth of scholarships available so this is like miss america's boom period and tv makes sense that that tv would do it you know what i mean and you can this is back before the internet so unless you had a healthy stash of girly magazines looking around the idea of you know beautiful young ingenues in swimsuits was very appealing an evening wear and you know whatever yeah women were slender and small with long gowns long gloves and ambitions of marriage motherhood and a sort of blandly genial depoliticized approach to world peace yeah my gut is just

like not right now but yeah cool cool cool contestants were asked their opinion on issues like whether a woman should be president one contestant responded women are very high strong and emotional people they aren't reliable enough when it comes to making a decision a snap decision i believe a man in such a predicament would be able to make a more justifiable and better decision the koolaid runs deep what makes the ideal wife the ideal wife depends entirely on the viewpoint of the husband oh okay audience-based i like that okay okay yeah what kind of aspirations should women enjoy what should we enjoy there are far too many women in the working world a woman's place is in the home with her husband and her children um thank you richard nixon said

it was the only pageant his daughters were allowed to stay up and watch like most of the country's cultural institutions miss america was forced to reckon with a wave of rapid social change in the 1960s uh huh sex revolution sex sexual liberation black power civil rights the birth control pill uh the the nascent seeds of queer activism right these are all everything miss america isn't about yeah yeah also vietnam war protesting as well like while anti-war protesters march through the streets miss america toured with the us o in vietnam yes see there we go there we go chippa chow in uh 1968 a young woman named robin morgan and a group called the new york radical women spearheaded a protest of miss america on the atlantic city boardwalk this is what i want thank

you no problem this is what i need to coincide with that year's pageant decrying miss america as racism militarism and capitalism all packaged in a woman among the 10 points listed as objectionable in the scathing press release penned by morgan um i think it was penned by morgan may have been penned by the group more generally i don't i'm not sure uh miss america as military death mascot the highlight of her reign each year is a cheerleader tour of american troops abroad last year she went to vietnam to pep talk our husbands fathers sons and boyfriends into dying and killing with a better spirit she personifies the unstained the unstained patriotic american womanhood our boys are fighting for the living bra and the dead soldier we refuse to be used as mascots for murder

okay cool cool let me add on the unbeatable madonna horror combination miss america and playboy centerfold our sisters over the skin to win approval we must be both sexy and wholesome delicate but able to cope demure yet titillatingly bitchy deviation of any sort brings we are told disaster you won't get a man not the hugest disaster but yeah yeah many onlookers especially men weren't ready to brave the second wave hecklers gathered on the streets to call the women commies pinkos lesbians witches all kinds of other horrible terms i'm sure kind of dope though yeah i'm a fucking commie pinko lesbian witch fuck you i'm hex in the moon tonight you want to come big sis they uh said that the protesters were simply jealous because they were too ugly

to be in the pageant no i love that aren't you and you must be if you if you have any sort of complaints around the way women are treated any at all uh you must be some sort of manhating lesbian blah blah blah ugly very it's very like jealous very yeah uh undeterred the nearly 400 protesters dumped bras stenopads dust mops and other symbols of traditional femininity into a wayspin they plan to burn the barrel but couldn't due to bylaws despite that the false image of the bra burning feminist has lived on an infamy oh wait but they never it never got burnt bylaws dude bylaws it really fucked me up learning how many of the symbols of the of the famous tropes of this era of feminism originated from this specific protest that is wild yeah like i almost don't believe you

just it feels like so iconic that it's like no it can't be from just this you know what i mean the um biological female so the little like the venus symbol the little circle with a plus you know yeah i can never remember which is which by the way but it's kind of a construct who cares yeah the you know the version of that that has like a raised fist inside it yeah that was originally created depicted in a color called menstrual red lovely for this protest whoa i'll do you one better the phrase do me one better sorry we were no balmy to say that i'm ready the phrase women's liberation which was introduced to america via a giant banner unfurled in the pageant hall while the outgoing miss america made her speech whoa women's live women's live this

shit started women's live or like not started women's lib but gave name to women's lib on a national scale let's say yeah yeah it's like where did black lives matter come from like trace it back to the women organizers who put it together yeah it's like it it grew and expanded and now it's and then became interesting yes yes yeah so then so like all of this shit where i'm just like yeah women's lib burning bras da da da that was all this pageant and this protest for the over the miss america pageant whoa i'm i'm also really stoked to hear because a lot of second-wave feminism early feminism too like a lot of not a lot a deep understanding of the racist uh under girding of of the misogyny so it's nice to hear that there was a little bit of you know

there was right there was not um not how do i put this imperfectly um there was oh yeah just put a pin in that because i'm coming back to it in like two seconds okay okay cool cool the banner didn't make the desired impact so activists released two stink bombs in the hall yeah they were believed to be comprised of uh tony home perm chemicals which was one of the pageant sponsors dope i love that they shot perm spray everywhere that is and everyone's like what the fuck is that one dying it smells like grandma yes my my hair is falling out yeah five of them were arrested while activists didn't rush the stage as it was rumored they might host burt parks had a contingency plan i'll grab her by the throat and keep right on singing what holy fuck there she is

this is that guy yeah yeah yeah whoa just grabbing a lady by the throat and everyone's supposed to i guess presumably cheer so then they'd probably say something like she's she's no kind of lady and everyone would laugh you know that same night the so the night of the protest and the night of the miss america pageant in 1968 a separate protest is held in the form of a second pageant miss black america okay this is a completely separate protest from the other one okay took place from midnight till 3am also in atlantic city the winner 19 year old saundra williams of philadelphia said miss america does not represent us with my title i can show black women that they two are beautiful so when i said that like the second wave feminism let's say of of this uh

new york radical women this protest group was imperfect they definitely came out in their kind of initial statements and they had stuff to say about racism in there but when they when they were like asked like okay how do you feel about this pageant miss black america somebody i forget who said something to the effect of like we kind of like revile miss america and miss black america equally although we understand that the black issue complicates things a bit when right yeah so not a very not a very deep understanding of no no and but i don't on the one hand i don't seek to project the entire values of every protester in that space to what this person says because if you've ever been to a protest you realize that it can be a pretty disparate group of

people who are all there for really different reasons but but it's also kind of important to say that like you know you had you're like oh i feel like you know sometimes this era of feminism whiffs that and you're like and it's like yeah a little bit yeah yeah i was just surprised it was even in their opening statements yeah at all and it you know from what you've chronicled too it's not like it's not anywhere else either do you know what i mean so that makes kind of you know lip service rather than actual action meanwhile over at the miss america pageant judian ford of illinois was uh shattering barriers of her own she was the first blonde winner in 11 years good for her wow she said i'm so glad i feel like it's a breakthrough

oh wow that was dense as fuck hashtag blonde rights like oh yeah i guess so yeah oh my god miss black america would carve out its own history as an organization its own legacy i guess is the way you'd put it okay their last crowning took place in 2018 among the notable miss black americas is charmel sullivan whom fans of professional wrestling will know as queen charmel all comes back to wrestling jessie hallways no it's this is yes the protests caused sponsor pepsi to drop the pageant saying miss america as run today does not reflect the values of our society oh interesting i wonder why they didn't just like send kendall gener out there to calm everything down you know they really should yeah yeah i know too bad too much she wasn't born yet

viewers seem to agree rating slipped then cratered pageant execs fired burt parks the host of 25 years oh the the choker out choker out guy uh there were some contestants who bucked the trend uh 1973 miss america rebecca king was an attorney feminist and spokely pro-choice hey which is in 1973 that's something hey yeah like i don't know when roe vs weight is but it's around there like surely i think so let's check 1973 it's literally 1973 so that's that's something that's kind of ball that's ballsy i love it it's that's uh eggy i don't know but by and large the pageant and its would-be queens were seen as relics of an irrelevant society yeah anytime get that this all brings us to 1983 all right so you can ease in it's the 80s now you know if you've listened to

any old episode of bittersweet infamy you know this is when the fuckery is really about to start oh yeah this is where it just gets started yeah there haven't been any winners of color since norma smallwood back in the 20s whom judges hadn't even known was a woman of color right uh since charl brown in 1970 there have only been 10 other black contestants who made it to the final round which is like all of us all 50 of us plus port of virgina islands at the time and dc and only one of those miss arkansas 1980 lancola sullivan made the top five okay okay now that i've caught you up on the first 60 years of this fucking pageant that is wild that is it okay let's meet miss new york 1983 venessa williams venessa williams is born march 16th 1963 uh her parents helen and milton

williams both music teachers announce her birth with a card featuring a smiling baby girl with a huge crown in scepter and a caption that reads here she is miss america oh that's cute okay i'm into that i like that at first i was like helen and milton calling their shot respect apparently helen's like no no idea i just thought it was the cutest card like venessa grows up in the small town of milford new york where she's the only black kid in her grade she's a born performer and a total theater kid with big ambitions of performing on broadway like that's what she wants she wants to be on broadway total theater kid total theater kid and both her parents are music teachers so like right yeah she's spunky charismatic a rule breaker and a risk taker and her mother

helen is always trying to keep her in line and save her from her worst impulses she says venessa would do what she wanted knowing she'd pay for it later and she always paid for it later usually with interest one of helen's many pieces of advice to a teenage venessa which she repeats ad nauseam oh i bet never pose nude for anyone oh man that was apparently and i'm sure helen helen seems like the type of lady that she probably had a few rules that she drilled into venessa and this is just the one that came true but apparently it is on the books that helen was like a million times like don't pose nude for anybody venessa i can see the look in your eye that's like a thing when your mom tells you not to pose nude it makes it makes you want to pose nude doesn't it yeah you

know it really makes you want to pose nude upon graduating high school she enrolls at syracuse university where she's a musical theater student she pays her way through school with a combination of support from her parents scholarships for performing and money picked up from mostly retail jobs when she's 19 she's looking for another job to make ends meet and she finds an ad in the penny saver that says models wanted all right the ad leads her to a two-story walk-up above a furniture store in mount kisco new york home of katlyn Jenner oh there you go listen don't say we never teach you anything on this show uh and in this walk-up she meets tom chappelle a man she describes as a henry the eighth lookalike so do that what you will god that says a lot way to

go venessa i'm gonna i might steal that that's really nice it's devastating for sure it says venessa tom also considered himself an artist little did i know he would become the biggest scam artist of my life so basically the kind of entire pretext on which tom and venessa meet is is a bit of a sham because what he's doing is he's not he's running a model registry so basically what it is is you come in he tells you you look so good you look like a model but you need a portfolio why don't you pay me to take some snaps for you and make portfolios right yeah so venessa does like a couple things with this guy and then one time when she's there to like pick up her photos or something she notices that he's looking for a receptionist and a makeup

artist to help him do shoots and she's like i can do that and so he hires her oh okay one day chappell asks venessa if she can stay after hours for a special photo shoot uh yep he says his friend amy is coming over to shoot some nude photographs they'll be tasteful black and white silhouettes no face is visible only forms he asks venessa if she'd like to participate venessa of course hears her mother's voice warning her in her head venessa don't pose nude for anybody venessa and does what all 19 year olds do when they hear their mother cautioning them not to do something ignores it does it run straight fucking at it yeah the photo shoot starts and i want to sorry i want to say to be clear nothing that happens in this story is venessa

williams fault in any way oh i can i'll put that out there right from the jump in a better world none of this ever happens to this young woman yes oh well i'm sure this chappell guy said that there would be no faces and we will learn something different yeah yeah basically i'm gonna tell you the story of this photo shoot now uh could potentially be upsetting please feel free to skip ahead should you need um it'll probably i reckon this one will take me just skip ahead two minutes we love you um see you later yeah so the photo shoot starts uh venessa's uncomfortable so tom encourages her to do some like nude jumps you're a dancer get those nerves out uh he takes some solo photos of aini and then he asks the two women to pose together venessa

says the photos felt silly and awkward and not artistic at all she has reservations quote we were two young women giving the man behind the lens all the power in the world why again not your fault sweetheart sorry like i'm terrible that this happened to you yeah she talks herself out of her misgivings thinking that she'd wanted to break free that summer and this is just the new adventurous artsy venessa which yeah i which like made me relate kind of hardcore to her this young woman is not a sexual deviant she is a fucking art student yeah she's a 19 year old yes who wants to be glamorous and smart and cultured and nude photos are very risque and daring and and titillating right so right yeah yeah yeah besides she didn't she's she hasn't signed a release

so it's not like anyone will ever see these photos okay yeah the next day tom shows her the contact sheets they're too tiny for her to make anything out venessa's like whatever weird experience let's leave it in the past yeah let's not talk about it ever again cool cool cool this isn't the only time venessa would find herself taken advantage of by a photographer after a day of tasteful g-rated photos a man named greg whitman uh she like travels out to new york city yeah to see greg whitman they take some photos like on a cab and da da da da and then he talks her into he he has her come back to his place and then he talks her into posing in snm gear it was like a oh wow she describes it as leather panties and a nipple lisp bra and she sees some of the stuff that he's

made and it looks like really editorial and really high-fat it doesn't look like um this other dufus's photos it looks like this guy's kind of half decent but she gets so uncomfortable with the shoot that she bails halfway and returns the next day with her boyfriend to take the negatives oh wow whitman at first refuses seeing of the photos these are our child and i don't want to give up our child ew yeah nasty bad argument no uh uh eventually he relents and gives venessa the negatives although she suspects that he didn't give her all of them right yeah venessa continues with her schooling uh she's performing in a review when she gets scouted for the misgrader saracuse pageant oh wow she got scouted she got scouted so this is the one that feeds into miss

new york which then feeds into yeah uh miss america right okay she considers the opportunity hems and haws but ultimately decides gainst it okay later she gets scouted again and this time she gets swayed by the 500 dollar pageant prize and decides to enter because as we know 500 dollars in 1983 is equivalent to about 19 grand today yeah exactly yeah much to her own surprise she wins the pageant and celebrates with beers with her friends like it's not something that she took overly seriously yeah so miss miss grader siracuse feeds into miss new york so venessa's like fuck it let's keep the ball rolling yeah if i can make a little more money awesome specifically uh she wants to do a semester abroad with a friend in london and so obviously this will really help oh yeah yeah she's

not a pageant girl but she's an actor and this is just another role yeah she enters miss new york and wins that too fuck dude gnarly she spends the next months on the parade circuit as she describes it sitting in a car waving two tractors and cows and uh getting ready for the 59th annual miss america pageant in atlantic city she gets her clothes together um she's worn away from red and purple outfits as they may appear too ethnic oh Jesus and she prepares her talent a vocal rendition of happy days are here again by the patron saint of bittersweet infamy barbra strisand uh hey babe what i will say is i obviously watched the entire 1984 miss america pageant at a girl where'd it go thank you love it here is oh look i'll give it to you in a gloss um

okay very bland very flavorless like i kind of had like laurence welk vibes very everybody kind of looked the same they were doing these yeah these dance routines to songs like shine it on that you were just like like i would look and i'd be like is this like really like maybe it's just 1980 and then i'm like no this doesn't this feels like dated for 1980 right you know what i mean yeah yeah you kind of had to like check in on the timeline like yeah it feels like something it feels like something from a bygone era at that point yeah um they also have a lot of so the version that i watched was very helpfully packaged i should add this i should have showed this out in the sources at the very top but i'll shut it out now it was on a youtube channel called i think

stratosphere and it has the entire pageant with all the commercials intact so you're getting all these fucked up commercials for things like hairspray with mink oil in it it's a fucking yeah no it's net can i i like after the end credits listen and i'll dub in the fucking commercial for this mink oil it's that good oh oh it's that good it's a bunch of like women in mink coats and people are like what is up with your hair and she'll just be like it's got to be mink it's fucking bizarre anyway oh i love it okay also adds uh advertising the new 20 piece mcnuggets oh see and that gives you the little time check in when you're like wait why are they doing this routine when there's 20 piece chicken mcnuggets in the world this does not this doesn't compute

compute yeah but yeah very very very stayed very very bland um how big is the hair like how bigger the sleeves massive massive so yeah the thing that venessa williams ends up choosing to get crowned in is this like lavender beaded it's it's got like some beadwork on it i think evening gown that looks great but then someone has like glued like what looks like a dyed lavender bath puff to the shoulder yeah oh yes yes yes and it's it's just like damn this was 1983 this was really yeah it's just a big loofa right on her shoulder by the way um the reason that i'm jumping back and forth between 83 and 84 which i should have set up front is the miss america is like post dated it's like because she most of the year in which this person will reign if she's getting

crowned in september is the next year so miss america 1984 is is determined in september 1983 gotcha okay yes i'm on venessa wins both the preliminary rounds swimsuit and talent so she comfortably makes the top 10 so i guess the way that they do it is they the stuff that you see on tv where they're doing like swimsuit and talent that's just them doing a demonstration for tv purposes but the actual their actual performance of it would have happened the day before during the preliminaries oh wow okay i did not know that that's why they know to bang it down to like 10 people right when the show starts all 50 of them come out they do their little who ha shine it on don't call me miss america call me miss you know whatever it is this year that was one of the 70s

ones they did a dance number called call me miss wow that was them modernizing yeah a slaughter was like damn it they want to be called miss now then yeah and then the next night it's the top 10 kind of go from there come to get okay yeah venessa's main rival is miss new jersey susette charles not rival in the sense that there seems to have been any bad blood between them at all but just right or that they even know each other or that they even know each other uh susette is kind of a bizarro version of venessa like she's venessa a scooch to the left like venessa she's a theater major who sang a barbra strissand song for her talent oh fuck doubling up she's also a woman of color mixed race with a black mom and an italian dad where is she from again you said long island

new jersey new jersey so she's like this pageant is a new jersey pageant so she's like the hometown favorite too the big difference between venessa and susette is susette was born and bred for pageants like she was a child actor she had appearances on the electric company in sesame street uh-huh she has put a lot of time and thought into how best to do this i will say she literally used the words world peace in her answer which i've never heard before oh so it's it's yeah it's not a cliche it's a real cliche or it is a cliche and she's just hedging her bets she's like who could disagree with world peace turns out a lot of people welcome to 2021 susette i'm sorry yeah and sure enough the contest comes down to venessa and susette

okay okay okay and eventually mc gary collins announces the winner miss new york venessa williams by her own admission her first thought there goes my semester abroad oh no poor baby that fucking sucks dude the whole point was the semester abroad yeah in london dammit she wanted that scholarship that's you know and now she's stuck in i don't know touring with the cows that's so rough of the moment shirley chism the first black woman elected to us congress yes an icon beautiful said she's great thank god i've lived long enough that this nation has been able to select the beautiful young woman of color to be miss america wow surely coming in coming in with some compliments some high praise yes said rock sand gay in her

essay collection bad feminist i was not the kind of girl who cared about pageants or being a beauty queen but watching williams and her perfect cheekbones and her glittering teeth as she accepted the crown gave girls like me ideas that moment made us believe we too could be beautiful african american studies scholar gerald early said we went my wife and i to celebrate the grand moment when white american popular culture decided to embrace black women as something other than sexual subversives or as fat kindly maids clearing up and caring for white families we had our own well royalty and royal origins mean a great deal to people who have been denied their myths and their right to human blood way to put it dr. early yeah dr. early's on it so like we've been discussing it's this

duality between like miss america yak but also like something like this happening feels important but maybe it would feel just as important if it weren't miss americor if it were some other cultural institution i don't know yeah yeah but i think there is something about the and it just it traces back to the like the same strange dichotomy of beauty right is like don't tell me what's beautiful but thank you for thinking i'm beautiful yeah you know like it's this weird you know it's also the case too that as much as as easy as it is to disparage miss america or whatever i i really found out particularly through this book by margo mifflin there there were a great deal of very cool women who competed in this contest um kate schindle miss america

1998 i think so she happens after this story she ends up becoming like a real big name um aides activist in the 90s and uses her platform to kind of to to move that forward and get access to like rural communities where that kind of conversation isn't even typically given access but because she's miss america she can go there and do those things right yeah and they give her the megaphone yeah so it's an interesting platform an interesting very flawed weird platform from there venessa quickly gets swept up into the exhausting schedule of miss america traveling 20 000 miles earning around 125 000 which is a decent chunk of change in 1984 oh yeah and she gets swept up in the exhausting reality of being the first black miss america where for every congratulatory hug handshake or

kind word there's a lewd letter death threat or person offended by her mere existence oh Jesus it's about to get pretty gnarly here folks i'm going to be telling you about the racial abuse that venessa encountered she's shocked by the anger and hatred shown to her um intellectually she knew it was likely yeah but still like really really hurts and surprises her like how much it hurts and all that totally yeah no exactly she tells the story of how the miss north carolina from her year danine graham had a cross burned on her lawn after she won the state title which is incredibly fucked up and horrifying oh venessa is understandably flustered to encounter this kind of abuse herself she and her parents receive letters that say you're dead bitch you'll never

be our miss america you're all black scum i'll throw acid in your face uh yeah some letters have pubic hair in them or spit or semen she also gets letters from black people who are frustrated that venessa big scare quotes around this isn't black enough right yeah yeah colorism to break this down basically the idea is there's a Eurocentric standard of beauty that emphasizes fair skin light eyes small facial features straight hair even among non-european cultures and um venessa and indeed her runner-ups use at charles very much fit this mold this standard of beauty still exists uh gabriella taveras the first black miss massachusetts and a 2018 miss america finalist says there's this idea of what beautiful is and in the past that ideal was white women

she adds i was afraid to wear my hair curly because i knew it didn't fit the european standard of beauty miss usa 2016 dishauna barbara agrees she's a dark complexed black woman and says she's faced colorism in the pageant world she waited until her last walk as miss usa to wear her natural is a tribute to her late mother quote she had been asking me all my years of pageants to wear my afro but i was way too afraid oh that's incredibly sad yeah it goes without saying that this is true of everyone that we're talking about and and and whatever but dishauna barbara stunningly beautiful stunning they all are but dishauna barbara like i saw a picture of her i was like oh you're very pretty woman it's fair that people would be frustrated by the existence of this kind of standard of beauty

that that privileges certain people over others less fair is sending venessa williams letters that say you're not really black you're lying you'll go to hell for your deceptions oh shit okay so people are people are coming at it coming at her really hard she um also gets criticized by both black and white people for having a white boyfriend oh god she's doing a q and a at lincoln university historically black university when an audience member asks why she doesn't date black men and and how she can represent black america with a white boyfriend um venessa responds that she does date black men and has dated black men just right now her boyfriend's a white guy yeah good answer yeah another deadly comment from the audience comes when she appears on

donahue where one audience member says you won because the lighting was different to make you look more white you didn't look black at all on the tonight show johnny karson cracks a joke no fuck you did you hear we have the first black miss america i bet you didn't know that mr t was one of the judges for the record all of the judges were white meanwhile the letters keep coming threatening to harm venessa or her mother helen for not passing crazy messages along to her no one guy is saving money to come to millwood and chop off helen's head and he mails weekly updates about how many dollars are in his bank accounts oh my god uh as venessa puts it death threats on layaway yeah uh another guy named mr bill is arrested on route 100 on his way from chicago to harm helen

because she'd hung up on him he is immediately institutionalized okay well uh other times stalkers make it all the way to the front door of the family home forcing dad milton to calmly talk to them on the porch till they leave oh my god fbi agents teach the williams is how to deal with the death threats and how to handle the letters to preserve evidence um when venessa visits alabama armed guards are posted outside her hotel room door and she's forbidden from riding in convertibles um when she does when she does her celebratory parades in millwood and chap aqua sharp shooters are posted on nearby roofs whoa it's not all miserable though venessa gets the opportunities and status that come with the crown she's by all accounts a fantastic miss america in terms of the post page

and duty is one of the best ever she sings new york new york at the macy's thanksgiving day parade cute the check gets sent to the other venessa williams venessa a williams of melrose place fame oh who graciously forwards it on there was a real there was a real battle that's weird no it's they're both young black women working as venessa williams one of them is venessa a one of them is venessa l i think they briefly took it to sag and sag was like okay you can both be venessa williams um they seem to be they seem to be very cordial with one another because i'm i'm always getting mixed up for you right right yeah venessa a is sending the check yeah exactly yeah venessa a williams for the record was on the first season of melrose place before they took it and like a

weird batshit so bob redirection so she was just like ronda the nice sexy young fitness instructor neighbor and like i think she like had got married to a rich guy and left the show and whatever and then it went but she wasn't on there for any of the sadly really demented shit oh shame she uh gets to sing to bob hope she sings the national anthem on the deck of the uss in trepid she uh venessa meets eddie murphy he asks for her number cute she can't do it so that's that doors are opening but they would all slam shut on friday the 13th no way really yeah whoa on july 13th 1984 venessa is talking to a reporter from the new york post answering the usual gamut of questions um they chat about geraldine ferraro who's just that day been named the

democratic vice presidential candidate under walter mondale and the first woman to run on a major party ticket uh venessa is like you know great to see women breaking the glass ceiling blah blah conversation goes well yeah and then at the end the reporter says by the way i heard from a very reliable source that there are nude pictures of you coming out in the september edition of penthouse magazine is that true venessa is horrified she says this has got to be a mistake i never authorized the publication of any photos i didn't sign a release she thinks it must be that guy greg whitman who had me posing the s and m gear there's no way it was tom chappell he's a friend and i didn't sign a release for him so he couldn't use the photos the call ends and she contacts her lawyer he gets

good move good move he gets back to her and confirms that the story is true uh her old boss tom chappell the henry v8 look alike uh he sold the photos to bob guccioni of penthouse magazine they'll be released in two months two months but advanced copies have been made available to the media oh the magazine cover features a photo of venessa piling around with comedian george burns and the caption miss america oh god she's nude uh terrible caption one but oh two george burns had just done an oh god it was like he was something called oh god like but like oh god really that's your reason yeah need ghouls so uh venessa obviously is devastated well but what about she didn't sign a release so what is that all about she'll sue later on put it to you that way okay okay

she's 21 years old oh my god she took the photos at 19 yeah she now not only has to deal with them being exposed to the world but she has to tell her parents yeah she has to tell helen her mother told her never pose nude it was her whole fucking thing and now she needs to go to helen and be like well i pose nude and everything's on fire because of it yeah uh the parents williams come to visit her in nyc and she talks to them in their hotel room um she can't stop sobbing she can't stop apologizing her parents hug her and the three of them hold each other for a long time in her head helen is pissed yeah yeah she can't show it not right now she's trying to keep it in yeah but she's she's like what were you thinking posing nude like she's yeah very that um when the magazine

eventually comes out milton does not look at the photos but helen does um in the pictures she says that her daughter looked sad and confused on the experience of the photos being released vanessa says i felt betrayed and violated like i had been raped so yeah she's it's hitting her really really hard yeah sponsors contact the pageant threatening to pull their advertising and because money talks the miss america organization calls vanessa and tells her that she has 72 hours to resign the crown pageant attorney lenard horn says in a media statement we do not believe under the content and spirit of the rules as well as the contracts as well as the image of miss america that she should remain miss america and still give this particular

program the vitality and the respect to which it's entitled if you don't draw the line here where do you draw the line i mean i don't know there's racism and misogyny and there's a lot of other lines that you very easily crossed so i don't know and a 19 year old art student posing nude yeah it is a media circus yeah it's salacious i watched this as after the pant the the version of the pageant that i watched includes this ted copple panel that i'll tell you a little bit about but he prefaces it with this like you know a lot of you don't want us to do this story but we've never seen a story that has divided opinion like this and gotten people talking so blah blah blah blah former miss america tawny little says and i edited this a bit for brevity i think that when

miss america has posed in the nude it shows to me that she has the mentality of i don't believe enough in myself maybe what i have to do is expose my body and use my body to get ahead and i think that is one of the worst things any woman can do it degrades femininity to say well the only way i can get ahead is to expose myself i think the miss america pageant stands for the opposite of that in spite of the swimsuit competition in spite of this fuck you fuck you she i was just like your brain just stumbled onto something there follow that yeah are you having a little long there oh my god did you know the story did you read that story written by she's a modern day model emily redajowski no she had a piece that was published

somewhere kind of big i forget like in style or something like that yeah she writes about the experience of being very young 1819 taking nude photos with a photographer who she thought she could trust it was awkward it was weird she did not like it nothing ever happened to them the photos she was very thankful and then all of a sudden this photographer comes out with a book that's called emily redajowski it's called her name and it includes all of the nudes every single one that's so ethical what's the most fucked up thing is she had absolutely no legal recourse because the photos he took the photos yeah so he owned the photos yeah she no longer owned her own image and the essay that she writes is really good because it talks a lot about

like the the strangeness of that encounter and being a young woman and that power dynamic that was so horrible but then just the legality of not owning your image as a model too when your livelihood is based off of your image and then you cannot yeah after it's just like it's fucking wild so uh this woman tawny little the former miss america she appears on a panel hosted by ted coppa which i told you about a little bit before uh it's also features representatives from uh penthouse and a group called mothers against pornography um and they're there to give like kind of the three they're all three white women they're there to give kind of the three answer the three points of view which are um this woman from penthouse i think her name is kathy keaton or kathy keenan she looks

like the personification of satan um and vibes like she looks like she's about to ask you to sign a contract in your blood you know yeah okay um and her whole take is that this is good for venessa and for her career her reign as miss america is like almost coming to an end this is because people like this shouldn't even be an issue this is a sexually liberated society blah blah blah right yeah um completely ignoring the fact that this was done like without her consent yes yeah the uh mothers against pornography woman whose name i don't recall she is she's pretty i agree with most of what she said on the show she's pretty this is exploitative and shame on penthouse for doing this to venessa williams okay oh wow but then the third one is this woman tawny little um

basically she's towing the line for miss america she kind of pays a lip service to the idea that um this is a bad thing that's happened to venessa but she's also like very like this could ruin the pageant you know this is an american institution yeah yeah no one's really concerned about the pageant but she's like but the pageant yes but the pageant yeah um so curiously the broadcast ends with a monologue from satirist ian shoals um he's which is like uh he's like uh it's like a knockoff andy rooney segment right like you know how yeah here's my little rant about the affairs of the day um and i will excerpt that for you now again this is edited a bit for brevity this isn't a scandal at all there weren't any kickbacks or break-ins just a black woman who revealed her body

for money a black woman making an error in judgment that might make her a better person what can they do to her stripper of wholesomeness like the badge of a public official will they take away her swimsuit and dorky high heels the collision between miss america and penthouse is a media collision of two false images of the american woman and bland images to boot the bland lead the bland in this country we're supposed to think it's tragic that miss america got sexy a black woman got to be as bland as the rest of white america and she threw it away wow interesting okay yeah huh parts of it i agree with parts of it i clubble with yeah yeah i was kind of ready to like either be all on board or yeah or all yeah that's it's an interesting strange not strange it's just interesting yeah

yeah well it interests me because it's one of the few let's call them contemporary takes takes from when this actually happened um that i've seen that explicitly mentions venessa's race uh okay yeah because the panel of three white women yeah hosted by ted copple and closed out by a white satirist right so everybody i saw commenting on this matter was white and by and large they seem to have been reticent to touch upon race in an incident where it didn't let's say explicitly play a factor yes yeah yeah it's 1984 it feels important to note however that we as a society as our friend jerald early was saying before uh we have a long history of hanging black women out to dry when they do things with their own bodies that we don't approve of there are many

examples the most relevant i can think of is janet jackson the nipslip yeah 2004 justin timberlake and janet jackson are performing on the halftime show justin timberlake reaches over to punctuate the end of the song gonna have you naked by the end of this song and then he rips off her like the cup of this bustier she was wearing and you could see i was a pasty wasn't it i thought it was like part of the outfit because they called it a wardrobe malfunction after that was the term oh i thought it was like a pasty that was the same fabric i think she had like a nipple ring on anyway okay okay point being point being in some form or another janet jackson's bare breast is exposed as part of the super as part of the super bowl halftime show and a lot of weird bullshit happened they had

to like edit the season of america's next hot model that was airing because it was too sexy and there was an or like dumb shit dumb weird shit happened around foolishness and all of it laid pretty much at the feet of janet jackson who is one of many people involved in this performance but was the owner of the breast yes and was and was a black woman right um so says a journalist cassie de costa venessa williams was supposed to be shining proof of the idea that black people could be tidy respectable intelligent beauty queens palatable to white audiences and institutions the photos blew that image up that very premise is of course a racist one racist and so for me it's hard to see things happening so quickly and so reactively if she weren't black

which i think is like a good way to to frame it because there will be people who say well that's not true any miss america could have their nudes leak and so this isn't a racial issue but as we've seen like being a woman of color had so much to do with how venessa's reign went that it feels impossible to divorce it from how her reign ended if that makes sense no exactly so i'm gonna make it worse because the images feature venessa nude in provocative poses with another woman there's also a streak of homophobia that snakes through the criticism she receives tawny little says that she cheapens the title by showing miss america quote submitting to a lesbian affair okay well fuck you and fuck you and oh oh yeah fuck you what the fuck comedians

make crass jokes uh venessa spots graffiti in new york city that reads venessa is a lesbian it also comes out that playboy had been offered the photos before penthouse um but refused hugh hefner claims lofty moral reasons about consent but a representative clarifies that the magazine does not use lesbian content okay well there we go which is interesting too because i think i read in the course of this that how playboy made it big was hugh hefner doing something very similar to maryland munroe at like publishing publishing new photos of her without her consent oh oh wow you know there's a story there too i didn't research it because i had a lot of my plate you had a very large blade of platter i had it was a century old filled with every kind of cool

every kind of ism but here we are yeah meanwhile bob guccioni and penthouse brows are slimy all over the media claiming that by releasing these images as venessa's reign comes to an end they've increased her notoriety and lengthened her career okay well you all can go suck a severed toe feels important to get back to venessa herself yes she knows how to decide whether she wants to fight for the crown or resign in disgrace team venessa hires a speech writer named ramon hervey who helps venessa write her speech and okay awesome idea by the way that's yeah that's smart yeah and ultimately at like hour 71 of her 72 hour deadline keeping waiting girl mm-hmm venessa holds a press conference she later describes the event as something of an

out-of-body experience where she realized that everyone was acting crazy because of her quote oh i felt like i was the only sane person in a room full of larry's curlies and moes which kudos to her for having the self-possession to recognize like holy fuck literally everybody is insane but me yeah i'm not crazy they are that's big that's a big thing that is big yeah yeah and i'm sure she had moments where she wavered in that but by and large she seems to have dealt she seems to have dealt with the situation with the confidence in poise be fitting i don't know miss america well put well put well put uh so she's determined to deliver her speech perfectly she explains the photos and resigns the crown saying it is one thing to face up to a mistake

one made in youth but it is almost totally devastating to have to share it with the american public and the world at large and with that uh venessa is no longer miss america the title is given to her runner-up susette charles okay who will carry out the duties of the crown for the seven weeks that remain in the rain oh sorry susette damn venessa still needs to deal with the fallout the leering headlines that call her venessa the andressa and mess america the shame the rejection the parking attendant that tells her uh i hate to say it but you look like venessa williams oh the letters that accuse her of being part of quote satan's chamber of horrors the upper west side co-op board that rejects her for an apartment due to her notoriety

the mayor of talladega alabama larry barton who writes her a letter demanding the key to the city back dot dot dot he would later go to jail for fraud boom okay good yes okay that felt nice it's not all hate though she also gets words of support from jesse jackson sammy davis jr former miss america and catwoman in the 1960s batman movie uh leigh maryweather sends her a beautiful letter and apparently they're still like very very close friends to this day cool whoa poet nicky giovanni tells venessa if i had a daughter i'd be more than delighted if she conducted herself as you have oh which i bet shit like that probably really helps when it feels like the whole world's against you and and that you've had to deal with your parents with this

this very personal and feeling guilt around that and like she's god bless her this is a woman who included her mother in her memoir so you can tell that what whoever thinks of her means a great deal to her yeah so after some time to think the former miss america decides her next move is to sue the fuck out of bob guccioni penthouse magazine and tom chappelle okay fun and tom chappelle oh yeah she's in there too okay good uh of note guccioni is able to get his hands on the second set of nudes shot by greg whitman and he runs them in penthouse a few months later under the headline oh god i did it again oh my god the second issue doesn't make nearly as much of a splash as the first which sold 20 million copies and was penthouse's highest selling issue ever

oh because all this fucking media we have to talk about these news we have to talk about these news but we can't show them to you and we don't have the internet because it's 1983 you have to go and buy penthouse magazine to see what everyone's talking about this magazine released advanced copies to the media they knew exactly what they were doing yeah no exactly perhaps taking that financial windfall into account venessa sets the figure of her suit at 500 million good the suit drags on though and eventually it becomes too much to deal with uh venessa doesn't want to waste the money of her parents who are funding her legal effort she was also i imagine she's funding some of her own legal effort as well but her parents helped

um she was also um sexually abused as a child by an older female friend and has been advised that by her lawyers that guccioni will find this out and use it against her which she's not into and after a while the hubbub around the photos dies down and venessa's life is for the first time in her own words not a circus uh she's ready to move on she drops the suit okay she tries to go forward with her acting career she gives a highly praised addition for a dream role for broadway play uh only to hear that her participation has been nixed by an ultimatum ultimatum from lyricist ira gershwin's wife i don't want that horror in my show okay fuck you another fuck you damn so shit upon the advice of remone hervey her crisis

feed trader who will later become her husband so there's there's that they're divorced now so but okay well cute for a while that's good on the advice of remone hervey she pivots to music in 1988 venessa williams releases her debut album the right stuff uh one single dreamin with an apostrophe uh peaks at number eight on the billboard hot 100 this is eclipsed by the biggest hit from her second album and one of in my opinion the best treakly romantic ballads of all time save the best for last this song holds number one for five weeks she sings colors of the wind over the end credits of the disney film pocahontas oh that's right in 1994 she achieves she achieves her dream of performing on broadway when she replaces cheetah revera in kiss of the

spider woman the first of many broadway roles to come uh then at the turn of the millennium she moves to television acting she plays the evil fashion mogul wolamina slater on ugly betty uh-huh she plays rene perry on desperate housewives she has a thumb in every pie yeah where is venessa now and what is her legacy we so seldom have happy endings on this show so i want you to soak this in okay okay because in the words of barbra strissand happy days are here again boom venessa williams is widely considered the most well-known successful and beloved miss america of all time she has released eight studio albums one live album and four compilations she has received seven n double acp image awards four satellite awards one soul train music award

and is the proud owner of a star on the hollywood walk of fame additionally she has been nominated for three emmy's 11 grammy's and a tony alongside many other prestigious nominations colors of the wind on which she featured won the academy award for best song boom boom and in 2020 she won her episode of ruPaul's secret celebrity drag race as her drag persona vanquisha da house amazing in 2016 venessa was invited back to serve as a judge at the miss america pageant the first time she had been acknowledged by the organization since she resigned she agreed on the condition that she could perform her song oh how the years go by afterwards she met pageant ceo sam haskell at center stage who said the following

i have been a close friend of this beautiful and talented lady for 32 years you have lived your life in grace and dignity and never was it more evident than during the events of 1984 when you resigned though none of us currently in the organization were involved then on behalf of today's organization i want to apologize to you and to your mother miss helen williams i want to apologize for anything that was said or done that made you feel any less than miss america you are and the miss america you will always be oh my god it's a good apology that's a really good apology wow i want to say her mom's name too i bet that's i was literally just like yeah

you won venessa over by including her mom i bet because venessa loves helen you know yeah and vice versa obviously yeah obviously but and helen's like helen's sitting there in like the front row like like fucking finally you're saying it yeah yeah i'm sure i'm sure but venessa don't pose nude again i know but there's some there's some acknowledgement i think in apologizing to her mother too that the the pain of it was not just venessa's no it wasn't it really affected her not only her but her family and a community too like it was much bigger than than just her venessa the thing that always seemed to horrify venessa most other than the the the stuff about letting her parents down was the idea that she had been an embarrassment to

the black community in in some way like she hated that yeah and and just how like incredibly hard that would have been to trudge through all the all the blame of like um or all the haggling of like you're not black enough or you're not light and light-skinned enough i was gonna say she represents the community as much as one woman in how much like 59 years at that point could because exactly you have if you don't like the miss america who talked about abortions you can like the miss america who wants to worship her husband if you don't like the miss america who was dumb as a post you can like this miss america who's this like intellectual jewish woman right yeah um like there's there was more although again the first and only jewish woman that they

that they had yeah but um but venessa really had this like she was the one and only black miss america and i mean i won't i won't go into the complete history of the pageant after 1984 um but like suffice it to say a roster of trailblazers and controversies that followed in venus's wake although there have since been other black winners as well as asian-american winners angela prez barakio and nina davilori and a deaf winner heather whitestone um while no openly queer people of one and i believe though i'm not certain that only one has ever participated in 2017 okay miss america 2005 deager downs explored her sexuality years after her win and eventually married another woman in 2019 for the first time ever the winners of all four major pageants mrs america usa

teen usa and universe were black women whoa sam haskell who issued the apology i just repeated would be removed from his role as ceo oh the very next year following the emergence of emails where he made harsh comments criticizing contestants in their bodies i think i did hear that yeah the mantle of revitalizing the pageant after haskell's departure would go to fox news anchor prominent me too figure and miss america 1989 gretchen carlson okay uh another another of the more prominent miss america winners and an all-female executive team or a mostly female executive team i think who eliminated the swimsuit competition after nearly a century carlson would step down after one year after reigning miss america caramund alleged that carlson quote systematically

silenced me reduced me marginalized me and essentially erased me in my role as miss america in subtle and not so subtle ways on a daily basis where once 80 000 women applied now only around 4 000 apply for miss america and its feeder contests annually most recently the 2020 pageant was canceled due to covid 19 that's like that that enrollment is dipping that is that is more than a dip that is a plummet i mean when's the last time you heard about miss america right i think it was the the rude comments about um yeah i was buddy's comments yeah yeah um so as miss america stares down her 100th year it seems like the endless growing pains have not yet ceased uh time will tell whether the event is in its waning days or just enduring yet another cultural shift

in the meantime let's throw it back over to miss america 1984 venessa williams for the final word yeah i look back at stories and headlines written about me at the time they'd say things like venessa's dark days or venessa's hit rock bottom i knew it would be tough but i also never doubted i would succeed when you know this you don't have dark days you don't hit rock bottom you just have days where you want to scream at people you have no idea what i can do shit dog is that the last line of her memoir it's i don't know if it's the last line but it's the line where she gets her because the the name of the book is you have no idea or you've got no idea or something like this yeah yeah whoa that's dope that's good i like that oh yes that's nice

very good so that is literally everything that has ever happened in miss america and yet there were massive parts of it that i needed to excise because and so many so many those women like yeah i want to follow that story i want to go wherever they went yeah no and they're all it's a real desperate cast of characters and there are people who are like iconoclasts and there are people who really toe the line and and try to like usher miss america back into a certain kind of like christian missionary role yeah yeah exactly um wow thank you for all of that rich rich research that was amazing it was largely the work of very cool and talented women including margo mifflin uh lisa aids who was the director of the documentary that aired on pbs miss america

and then venessa and hillan williams right so also next episode that you'll be listening to you will enter the haunted house of our trick-or-treat infamy yes we're gonna be doing stories from beyond stories from beneath the grave stories from inside the crypt stories spooky yuki we're also going to have a guest because it's one of those great months with three sundays so we're gonna have a guest this month and we look forward to uh sharing that person's voice with you yeah dogs thanks for tuning in if you want more infamy go to bittersweetinfamy.com or search for us wherever you find your podcasts we usually release new episode every other sunday and you can also find us on instagram at bittersweetinfamy and if you liked the show consider subscribing

leaving a review or just tell a friend stay sweet in preparing for this episode i listened to two audiobooks both available on audible the first was looking for miss america a pageant's 100 year quest to define womanhood by margo mifflin i also listened to you have no idea a famous daughter her no-nonsense mother and how they survive pageants hollywood love loss and each other by venessa and helen williams with irine zital i watched the documentary miss america directed by lisa aids which appeared on the pbs documentary series american experience i read a felony just to own the sleazy story behind penthouse's most controversial issue by lelia nolik on september 15th 2020 by coincidence on the

same day september 15th 2020 amily radish kowski published in the cut the article that joey was talking about which i highly recommend i'll find myself back when does a model own her own image i went to a website called joe freeman dot com which features the mostly political photographs of joe freeman and the page that i read there was no more miss america 1968 to 1969 which details the protests of miss america in 1968 i also read the press release that robin morgan circulated for that protest i read what are beauty pageants really like for black women by kelsey vlamis for bbc news december 12th 2019 miss america's history makers and rule breakers by loren collins in the new yorker august 31st 2020 i read the history of the pageant offered by

the miss america organization itself at miss america dot com and i read the wikipedia page venessa williams and miss america along with you know various other venessa williams related wikipedia pages to count her many awards the entire 1984 miss america pageant complete with commercials as well as clips on venessa's reign to help contextualize it can be found on the youtube account stratosphere our interstitial music is by michael collins the song you are currently listening to is called t street by brian steele put some mink oil in your hair how does she do it not a hair out of place the difference is mink how does she do it her hair looks as soft and silky as her make the difference is mink this is mink difference it's different

from any other hairspray it puts a silky hold on your hair because it's enriched with precious mink oil in every drop so your hair feels soft and silky like mink but it really keeps you in style mink difference hairspray