A Beautiful Pageant

A Beautiful Pageant
Author: D. Krasner
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2016-09-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137066253

The Harlem Renaissance was an unprecedented period of vitality in the American Arts. Defined as the years between 1910 and 1927, it was the time when Harlem came alive with theater, drama, sports, dance and politics. Looking at events as diverse as the prizefight between Jack Johnson and Jim 'White Hope' Jeffries, the choreography of Aida Walker and Ethel Waters, the writing of Zora Neale Hurston and the musicals of the period, Krasner paints a vibrant portrait of those years. This was the time when the residents of northern Manhattan were leading their downtown counterparts at the vanguard of artistic ferment while at the same time playing a pivotal role in the evolution of Black nationalism. This is a thrilling piece of work by an author who has been working towards this major opus for years now. It will become a classic that will stay on the American history and theater shelves for years to come.

Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women

Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women
Author: Blain Roberts
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2014-03-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1469614219

From the South's pageant queens to the importance of beauty parlors to African American communities, it is easy to see the ways beauty is enmeshed in southern culture. But as Blain Roberts shows in this incisive work, the pursuit of beauty in the South was linked to the tumultuous racial divides of the region, where the Jim Crow-era cosmetics industry came of age selling the idea of makeup that emphasized whiteness, and where, in the 1950s and 1960s, black-owned beauty shops served as crucial sites of resistance for civil rights activists. In these times of strained relations in the South, beauty became a signifier of power and affluence while it reinforced racial strife. Roberts examines a range of beauty products, practices, and rituals--cosmetics, hairdressing, clothing, and beauty contests--in settings that range from tobacco farms of the Great Depression to 1950s and 1960s college campuses. In so doing, she uncovers the role of female beauty in the economic and cultural modernization of the South. By showing how battles over beauty came to a head during the civil rights movement, Roberts sheds new light on the tactics southerners used to resist and achieve desegregation.

Here She Is

Here She Is
Author: Hilary Levey Friedman
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2020-08-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 080708364X

A fresh exploration of American feminist history told through the lens of the beauty pageant world. Many predicted that pageants would disappear by the 21st century. Yet they are thriving. America’s most enduring contest, Miss America, celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2020. Why do they persist? In Here She Is, Hilary Levey Friedman reveals the surprising ways pageants have been an empowering feminist tradition. She traces the role of pageants in many of the feminist movement’s signature achievements, including bringing women into the public sphere, helping them become leaders in business and politics, providing increased educational opportunities, and giving them a voice in the age of #MeToo. Using her unique perspective as a NOW state president, daughter to Miss America 1970, sometimes pageant judge, and scholar, Friedman explores how pageants became so deeply embedded in American life from their origins as a P.T. Barnum spectacle at the birth of the suffrage movement, through Miss Universe’s bathing beauties to the talent- and achievement-based competitions of today. She looks at how pageantry has morphed into culture everywhere from The Bachelor and RuPaul’s Drag Race to cheer and specialized contests like those for children, Indigenous women, and contestants with disabilities. Friedman also acknowledges the damaging and unrealistic expectations pageants place on women in society and discusses the controversies, including Miss America’s ableist and racist history, Trump’s ownership of the Miss Universe Organization, and the death of child pageant-winner JonBenét Ramsey. Presenting a more complex narrative than what’s been previously portrayed, Here She Is shows that as American women continue to evolve, so too will beauty pageants.

The Most Beautiful Girl in the World

The Most Beautiful Girl in the World
Author: Sarah Banet-Weiser
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 1999-09-30
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 0520217918

This is work in the best tradition of cultural analysis, refashioning a seemingly banal cultural object into a newly complicated and eye-opening thing.

Beauty Queens

Beauty Queens
Author: Libba Bray
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Total Pages: 472
Release: 2011-05-24
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0545388716

From bestselling, Printz Award-winning author Libba Bray, the story of a plane of beauty pageant contestants that crashes on a desert island.Teen beauty queens. A "Lost"-like island. Mysteries and dangers. No access to emall. And the spirit of fierce, feral competition that lives underground in girls, a savage brutality that can only be revealed by a journey into the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Oh, the horror, the horror! Only funnier. With evening gowns. And a body count.

101 Secrets to Winning Beauty Pageants

101 Secrets to Winning Beauty Pageants
Author: Ann-Marie Bivans
Publisher: Citadel Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 1995
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 9780806516431

Presents advice on the best attitude, clothes and accessories, and performance techniques for beauty pageant competition

Beauty Queens on the Global Stage

Beauty Queens on the Global Stage
Author: Colleen Ballerion Cohen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: Education
ISBN: 113665819X

Modern beauty contests were invented by P.T. Barnum in the United States, but in the 20th century pageants and contests have spread across the entire world from Nepal to Tierra Del Fuego. Why are women (and sometimes men in drag) parading on stage such a universally appealing spectacle, attracting an audience in the billions? This book is the first global comparison of pageants from different parts of the world, at the ways each contest is both intensely local and unique, and simultaneously global and remarkable repetitious. The authors use the latest tools of feminist, ethnographic, and literary scholarship to unpack and interpret one of the greatest and most universal spectacles of modern times.

African American Theatre

African American Theatre
Author: Samuel A. Hay
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1994-03-25
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780521465854

This book traces the history of African American theatre from its beginnings to the present.

High Glitz

High Glitz
Author: Susan Anderson
Publisher: powerHouse Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: Beauty contestants
ISBN: 9781576875148

An intimate look at America's child beauty pagaents. The vibrant portraits of these young contestants twist notions of sexuality and identity, exposing a new perspective on a uniquely American subculture. High Glitz is a subgenre of pagaents characterised by couture costumes,glamour make-up, elaborate hair styles and even dental veneers. The girls are spray-tanned, made-up and groomed to glossy perfection. Anderson captures the results of this time-consuming and often unnerving endeavour in exquisite detail.

Beauty Diplomacy

Beauty Diplomacy
Author: Oluwakemi M. Balogun
Publisher: Globalization in Everyday Life
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2019-12-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781503610972

The Nigerian beauty pageant industry positions itself as working to symbolically restore the public face of the nation while seeking to materially shift the private lives of affiliates on the ground.