Praise for Looking for Miss America
Library Journal, A 2020 Title to Watch
"The conception, commercialization, and exploitation of the 'ideal' woman, as embodied in the Miss America pageant, is a story that reflects the country’s social forces and cultural biases. Margot Mifflin has written a lively history of Miss America that gives meaning to the ever-evolving image of today’s women." —Lynn Povich, author of The Good Girls Revolt
Praise for Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo
“The insights [Margot Mifflin] brings are insinuating and complex . . . Bodies of Subversion is delicious social history.” — The New York Times
“Mifflin's thesis is rooted in subversion. She asserts that tattoos in Western culture have always been subversive for women, especially in the 19th century when they violated the assumption that ‘women should be pure, that their bodies should be concealed and controlled, and that ladies should not express their own desires.’" — The Atlantic
“ Bodies of Subversion. . . beautifully documented the evolution of women and tattoos from Victorian couture to mastectomy scar coverups in the nineties . . . [It was] the only book to chronicle tattooed women and women tattoo artists.” — The Cut
“More than just a photographic history of this deep subculture . . . [The book] is a close study of women during a period of historic limitations and social mobility, beginning to break barriers by exploring alternative ideas of beauty and self-expression.” — Feministing
“In this provocative work full of intriguing female characters from tattoo history, Margot Mifflin makes a persuasive case for the tattooed woman as an emblem of female self-expression.” —Susan Faludi
“Essential reading for anyone interested in the subject.” —Ed Hardy
Praise for The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman
The Booklist Reader, 1 of 150 Memoirs and Biographies of Women, by Women
Finalist for the Caroline Bancroft History Prize
Named a Best of the Best from American University Presses by the American Library Association
A Southwest Book of the Year
Named a Book of the Year by over a dozen regional publications including The Kansas City Star, Anchorage Daily News, and Idaho Statesman
Named a Book of the Year by PopMatters
A One Book Yuma community read selection for Yuma, Arizona
“Mifflin engagingly describes Oatman’s ordeal and theorizes about its impact on Oatman herself as well as on popular imagination . . . Her book adds nuance to Oatman’s story and also humanizes the Mohave who adopted her. Recommended for general readers as well as students and scholars.” — Library Journal
“ The Blue Tattoo is well-researched history that reads like unbelievable fiction, telling the story of Olive Oatman.” — Bust
“An easy, flowing read, one you won’t be able to put down.” — The Christian Science Monitor
“An important and engrossing book, which reveals as much about the appetites and formulas of emerging mass culture as it does about tribal cultures in nineteenth-century America.” — The Times Literary Supplement
“Margot Mifflin has written a winner . . . The Blue Tattoo offers quite intense drama along with thorough scholarship.” —Elmore Leonard
07/01/2020
Beauty pageants have long been a topic of research and wide interest, and Mifflin's (Bodies of Subversion) work offers excellent content and historical analysis to this ongoing discussion. The book focuses not on pageantry in general, but instead specifically analyzes the 100-year-history of the Miss America pageant, since its founding in Atlantic City in 1921. This narrower focus allows the author to share personal stories of winners and contestants, and helps readers to better understand how the institution evolved under various leaders and reacted to societal shifts throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Many events will be familiar to even casual observers of American culture—such as the notorious "bra burning" protests and the moment that winner Vanessa Williams was forced to resign—but Mifflin situates these events in the pageant's historical context, allowing for a better understanding of their cultural impact. While deftly commenting on the racism and sexism that have characterized the pageant's history, she also makes space for the contestants to speak openly for themselves about their own experiences, something pageants themselves are not known for. VERDICT This work offers a thought-provoking, balanced, and highly informative look at an institution that has perplexed and enticed Americans since its founding.—Sarah Schroeder, Univ. of Washington Bothell
2020-04-20
The Miss America program heads toward its second century still trying to shed its image as a “leg show” or “cheesecake with a side of culture.”
Journalist Mifflin offers a lively and probing appraisal of a pageant that will observe its centennial in 2021. Drawing on research that includes interviews with former Miss Americas from different eras, this well-balanced account shows that while the program has helped many contestants envision futures beyond their hometowns, it has always had unsavory aspects at odds with its organizers’ efforts to invest it with a wholesome image. The most egregious of these, formally adopted in 1940 and in effect until the 1950s, required contestants to be “in good health and of the white race.” Fresh troubles hit in later decades as feminists’ protests and expanding women’s rights made the program look out of touch. Organizers tried to adapt by killing the swimsuit competition (2018) and having each contestant choose a “social issues platform” to promote (1990). Still, the TV ratings tanked, the number of entrants plunged, and the pageant CEO was forced out after emails surfaced showing that he had “slut-shamed” contestants. Perhaps the most disturbing fact in this book is that since 2007, entrants have had to engage in what Kate Shindle, Miss America 1998, calls “pay to play.” Each contestant “must raise a minimum amount—by soliciting donations—to compete,” and while some of the proceeds go to children’s hospitals, much of it goes to pageant scholarships, so that “contestants themselves have funded 85 percent of Miss America’s scholarships.” Mifflin relates all of this without descending into ridicule or screed and with a keen sympathy for both the costs and benefits to entrants. Whether fans or foes of Miss America, few readers will see the pageant in the same way after finishing this book.
A cleareyed look at an iconic beauty pageant and its efforts to stave off irrelevance. (16-page color insert)
