Episode Details

Throughout the 1960s, the annual Miss America Pageant was often the most widely watched show on television. In a series of competitions in Atlantic City, its contestants vied to be chosen as the perfect example of American womanhood. How did the pageant define the perfect woman, how did that definition change over time, and did it ever reflect who American women really were? Host Sheryl McCarthy talks with Margot Mifflin, a Professor at Lehman College and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, to answer those questions. In her new acclaimed book “Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100 Year-Old Quest to Define Womanhood,” she chronicles the birth, rise and decline of an American institution that held generations of girls and women in thrall.

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