Miss America ‘68, women’s lib, and the politics of beauty

Historian Micki McElya’s book, ‘Liberation Summer,’ revisits September 1968, when three groups of women converged on the Atlantic City boardwalk: feminists protesting the Miss America Pageant, contestants in the first-ever Miss Black America Pageant, and women defending Miss America herself. McElya argues the collision that day created a politics of beauty that runs through the rise of the religious right, the #MeToo era, all the way to today. She spoke with Tonya Mosley. 

Also, TV critic David Bianculli reviews HBO’s ‘Big Bang’ spin-off,  ‘Stuart Fails to Save the Universe.’ 

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