THERE SHE WAS: THE SECRET HISTORY OF MISS AMERICA
AMY ARGETSINGER
� 2021 One Signal Publishers / Atria
$28.00 / $37.00 Canada
384 pages

You've been doing it since you were a year old.

But now you have to relearn how to wave. No more hand-flapping or finger-wiggling, no more exuberant, overhead arm-thrust like a cowpoke on a mechanical bull; you have to learn to wave in a ladylike manner when you become a beauty queen. But, as Amy Argetsinger shows in There She Was, a lively history of the Miss America pageant, how to wave is only the start of what a beauty queen had to learn.

For Miss America contestants, everything started to change in 1968, the year feminist protestors threw their bras into a "Freedom Trash Can" in Atlantic City, site of the pageant. (The bras weren't burned, as popular culture claims, but the women who tossed them away were burning with passion.) These women were the same ones who'd marched against the war and for civil rights, and now they were demonstrating against what had become an American institution: the Miss America pageant.

It was the first time in its history that the pageant would be "so brazenly challenged," Argetsinger notes, but it wouldn't be the last; fans and detractors alike demanded that the organization keep up with changing American society and culture, and this affected everything, right down to hairstyles, makeup and talents. Young Miss America contestants also became outspoken about their beliefs and their politics.

Changes in American society opened the door for a Lesbian Miss America, a deaf Miss America, a Miss America who was born without a left forearm, and the pageant's first Indigenous and Asian-American winners. Even the after-reign period of Miss America changed, with former winners choosing careers rather than retreating to the kitchen. This gave Phyllis George (Miss America 1971) the opportunity for a television career, one that almost ended with what we now call sexual harassment. Terry Meeuwsen (Miss America 1973), also unafraid of the public eye, used controversy to further her career. Amid all these changes, the reins on the press were also loosened, and now journalists were eager to find a crack in the usual Miss America armor.

That was the downfall of the first Black Miss America, Vanessa Williams.

Williams, argues Argetsinger, was one of the most talented winners in the pageant's history, but with just nine weeks left to reign, she was forced to resign in disgrace over an incident designed to humiliate her. Thirty-one years later, changes were ripe for a triumphant, wildly successful Williams to return to the fold as a judge for the pageant.

Despite the book's subtitle, there are no secrets in There She Was. That's okay because there are still jaw-dropping surprises, and not one of them is snarky or gossipy. Argetsinger isn't muckraking here, although she does write about pageant scandals and about how they were dealt with by young women who were blazing trails without realizing they were doing so. This chapter in women's history is impossible to ignore, and Argetsinger's thorough reporting on past winners makes it even better. She spends time with a host of former Miss Americas, catching up so we know where our hometown "girls" are now and what they've done with their lives — and the competitors of the last 50 years have done a lot.

In the end, while it might agitate you some, There She Was is also quite the feel-good book. If you're a feminist, a fan or a former wanna-be, find this book; don't wave it away.