Swimsuit worn in Miss America 1948 pageant by BeBe Shopp Waring
date: label: date made
content: around 1947
name: label: maker
content: Catalina
notes: label: Description
content: This swimsuit was worn by Beatrice "Bebe" Shopp (now Bea Shopp Waring) in the pageant where she was crowned Miss America 1948. The black and white striped, one-piece swimsuit was made by Catalina. The 1948 competition was the first to crown its winner in formalwear rather than the swimsuits that every other Miss America had worn for their crowning. The new swimwear competition was just one of the events that defined the reformulated pageant that year, an attempt to place a new emphasis on talent, intelligence, and polish rather than simply judging contestants on attractiveness.
label: Description
content: Born in Hopkins, Minnesota August 17, 1930, Beatrice Shopp took the nickname BeBe to distinguish herself from her mother Beatrice. She learned to play the vibraharp, a percussion instrument related to the xylophone and marimba - a talent that her parents suggested she take to the stage as a pageant competitor. After being crowned Miss Minnesota 1948, Shopp went to Atlantic City, NJ to compete in the Miss America pageant on September 11, 1948, and took that title as well. Minneapolis Star columnist Virginia Safford wrote that Shopp possessed beauty and charm that made her almost the feminine ideal in late-40s America: “She was really perfection — so fresh, so young, so natural. She has the characteristics most women desire: wholesome, natural good looks. She seems so nice, so unaffected, unspoiled and a little bewildered. She’s a bright girl.”
label: Description
content: While on her 1949 European tour, Shopp also made news for her opposition to the bikini that was becoming fashionable in the late 1940s. As the Los Angeles Times reported in 1949 Shopp said "I don't approve of Bikini suits for American girls...The French girls can wear them if they want to, but I still don't approve of them on American girls." The comments were widely-reported and discussed, with commentators and critics taking sides on whether Miss America ought to be weighing in on contemporary fashion trends. As Shopp Waring told People Magazine in 2000, “it was all over the papers that I had come to clean up Europe and get rid of the bikinis. Atlantic City was furious. I was certain I was going to be dethroned.” BeBe's father Edward Shopp also spoke with reporters, suggesting that the furor over his daughter's comments were "the work of some Red over there,” and theorizing that a Communist propagandist was misquoting BeBe “to undermine the character of my daughter, and through her, the American girl.”
label: Description
content: After her title year, Shopp became a professional musician, married Korean War navigator Lt. Bayard Waring in 1954, settled in New England, and raised a large family, all while remaining involved in the Miss America and various state pageants.
label: Description
content: In its century-long history, the Miss America pageant has been a popular, influential, and controversial fixture in American entertainment and culture. The pageant has shaped Americans’ conversations about gender, sexuality, beauty, race, disability, and activism. It has also inspired protest and criticism from both socially conservative and feminist activists who have denounced its vision of ideal womanhood and judgement based on physical appearance. In recent decades, reformers and advocates have attempted to rebrand the competition as a more inclusive and supportive contest that gives women a platform to celebrate their achievements and advocate for important causes.
label: Description
content: The Miss America pageant was first staged as a “bather’s review” conceived by Atlantic City, New Jersey business owners, boosters, and journalists to bring visitors to the resort area in the off-season. On September 8, 1921, 100,000 people gathered at the Atlantic City Boardwalk to watch the contestants from Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Ocean City, Camden, Newark, New York City, and Philadelphia compete in the first pageant. Margaret Gorman of Washington DC was crowned the "Golden Mermaid" and earned the title as the first Miss America. In its early years the pageant welcomed women as young as 15 if they were amateur – no professional models or actresses allowed – and unmarried. Pageant officials took detailed measurements of contestants’ bodies, which were reported at length in newspapers along with details of their appearance, constituting an almost scientific record of contemporary beauty standards. The pageant’s emphasis on youthful beauty, inclusion of a swimsuit competition, and disreputable associations made it a target of social reformers for years to come.
label: Description
content: In the following decades the pageant became increasingly popular and gained national prominence as the pageant organization set rules, professionalized, and demonstrated an incredibly effective ability to generate publicity. Under the directorship of longtime executive Lenora Slaughter, the pageant transitioned from a pure beauty contest to a test of refinement, grace, and purity that sought to define the image of femininity in American society. Joining the swimsuit competition were a talent portion, college scholarships for winners, and a formal association with the national Junior Chamber of Commerce organization that helped crown “modest, cheerful, obedient, and essentially conservative young college women,” as pageant historian Amy Argetsinger wrote. Under rules established in 1938, pageant contestants were required to be between 18 and 28, unmarried, and “of good health and of the white race."
label: Description
content: Issues of race, ethnicity, femininity, and exploitation would simmer on the backburner for years, but come to define the pageant in the years following its greatest popularity and success, from about 1945-1970. In 1968, four hundred women’s liberation activists led by the New York Radical Women organized a well-publicized protest of the pageant in Atlantic City. The demonstrators burned bras, girdles, curlers, and high-heeled shoes, proclaiming them “instruments of torture to women,” staged a “cattle auction,” in reference to their belief that contestants were treated like livestock, and marched with signs outside the event.
label: Description
content: At the same time, the local NAACP organized a competing Miss Black America pageant to highlight the historical exclusion of people of color from the contest. Although the racial requirement – rule seven – had been repealed in 1950, it wasn’t until 1971 that the first African American woman made it to the competition (Miss Iowa Cheryl Browne), and 1984 that the first African American woman was crowned Miss America (Miss New York Vanessa Williams). Williams was forced to resign the following year when nude photographs she had posed for came to light, supposedly tarnishing the image of the organization – a controversial move that was hotly debated and seemed to further damage the pageant’s reputation for diversity and inclusion.
label: Description
content: In recent decades, reformers and advocates have attempted to rebrand the competition as a more inclusive and supportive contest that gives women a platform to celebrate their achievements and advocate for important causes. The Miss America organization now bills itself as “first, and foremost, a scholarship program,” highlighting its long-standing tradition of awarding educational scholarships to titleholders. The organization pays titleholders a generous salary and organizes appearances throughout the country while requiring candidates to raise money for charity. The swimsuit competition was eliminated from the pageant program in 2018.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: California
topic: label: Subject
content: Beauty Contests & Pageants
setName: label: See more items in
content: Culture and the Arts: Entertainment
label: See more items in
content: Popular Entertainment
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Beatrice B. Waring
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2021.0194.01
label: accession number
content: 2021.0194
label: catalog number
content: 2021.0194.01
objectType: label: Object Name
content: swimsuit
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: wool. cotton (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 22 in x 16 in; 55.88 cm x 40.64 cm