9 / 100
would accept entries in the form
of photographic likenesses. These
photographs would be displayed in
his museum and the public would vote
for them. The final ten entrants would
receive specially commissioned oil
portraits of themselves. These por-
traits would be reproduced in a “fine
arts” book to be published in France,
entitled the World’s Book of Female
Beauty. Barnum sold off his museum
before the photographs arrived, but
in employing modern technology and
in combining lowbrow entertainment
with the appeal of highbrow culture,
Barnum pioneered a new model of
commercial entertainment.
In the decades to come, the picture
photo contest was widely imitated
and became a respectable way for
girls and women to have their beauty
judged. Civic leaders across the coun-
try, seeking to boost citizen morale,
incorporate newcomers, and attract
new settlers and businesses to their
communities, held newspaper contests
to choose women that represented the
“spirit” of their locales. One of the most
popular of these contests occurred in
1905, when promoters of the St. Louis
Exposition contacted city newspapers
across the country to select a repre-
sentative young woman from their city
to compete for a beauty title at the
Exposition. There was intense com-
petition and, according to one report,
forty thousand photo entries.
By the early decades of the twentieth
century, attitudes had begun to change
about beauty pageants. Prohibitions
against the display of women in public
began to fade, though not to disappear
altogether. One of the earliest known
resort beauty pageants had been held
in 1880, at Rehoboth Beach, Dela-
ware. However, it was not until the
twentieth century that beach resorts
began to hold regular beauty pageants
as entertainments for the growing
middle class. In 1921, in an effort to
lure tourists to stay past Labor Day,
Atlantic City organizers staged the first
Miss America Pageant in September.
Stressing that the contestants were
both youthful and wholesome, the
Miss America Pageant brought to-
gether issues of democracy and class,
art and commerce, gender and sex -
and started a tradition that would grow
throughout the century to come.