Those Racy Bathing Suits In The 1926 Miss America Beauty Pageant
Pick of Nation In Race For Nation’s Beauty Crown!
A staggering fascinating view of the cream of America’s beauty , gathered from all corners of the United States to vie for title of Miss America at Atlantic City. The beauties of all sorts and moods – are pictured as they appeared September 8, lined up for rehearsal of ceremony of picking of winner. photo: Pacific and Atlantic Photos 9/9/1926
The Miss America prize was awarded to “The Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America” starting in 1921. As you can see in our photo, originally the competitors were from various cities around the United States and not representing individual states.
The irrelevant Miss America contest still takes place but without the bathing suit competition.
The swimsuit portion for the Miss America beauty pageant was eliminated several years ago. I couldn’t care less one way or the other, but honestly, wasn’t the Miss America contest always a boobs and buns contest?
The Me-Too movement and politically correct atmosphere of recent years doomed the most popular portion of the contest.
Former Miss America 1989, Gretchen Carlson, the chairwoman of Miss America’s board of directors announced in 2018, “We are no longer a pageant; we are a competition. We will no longer judge our candidates on their outward physical appearance. That’s huge.”
Why would anyone be judging looks in a beauty contest? People want to see the contestants display their talents. Or even better, hear their ramblings, especially when they do it in a Miss America-like speech pattern.
From Woody Allen’s 1971 Bananas.
In 1954 the Miss America contest attracted 27 million television viewers. In 1988, 55 million people tuned in. Of course there were fewer viewing choices decades ago.
But, TV audiences dropped to an all-time low of 4.3 million people in 2018, when the swimsuit round was eliminated, and fell again to 3.6 million the following year.
Gretchen Carlson resigned from the board in 2019.
After 2021 Miss America television viewership was practically non-existent. Miss America has now become a streaming-only event on the Peacock network.
