20 Bizarre Beauty Pageant Titles Americans Once Took Seriously
When Every Industry Crowned Its Own Queen
For much of the twentieth century, American industries crowned women to help sell their products. A trade association could give someone a sash, send her to parades and store openings, and get newspaper coverage without paying for an ad. Almost anything with a trade group behind it could have its own queen, which explains how oddly specific some of the titles became. A few campaigns lasted for decades, with serious budgets and plenty of surviving photographs. Here are 20 of the strangest tiles Americans once took seriously.
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1. Maid Of Cotton
The National Cotton Council ran this one from 1939 to 1993. The Memphis Cotton Carnival and the cotton exchanges of three cities backed it. Winners toured in cotton wardrobes as industry spokeswomen, and the role drifted closer to a job than a title. Then the funding dried up. The Smithsonian holds the records now, ninety-one boxes of them.
Mississippi Department of Archives and History on Wikimedia
2. Miss Correct Posture
Chiropractors held their own beauty contests, and the 1956 competition in Chicago judged women on looks, poise, posture, and full-body X-rays of their spines. Contestants also stood with one foot on each of two scales to see whether their weight was evenly distributed. The ideal result was half on each scale. Apparently, nobody thought twice about giving contestants X-rays for a beauty pageant.
3. Miss Subways
A subway advertising company ran this contest from 1941 to 1976, putting the winners' photos on placards inside New York City subway cars. By 1957, some 14,000 placards were being seen by an estimated 5.9 million riders a day. Around 200 women held the title over the years, making them familiar faces to commuters across the city. For all that exposure, the prize was a bracelet with a plated subway token attached.
Wcnghj at English Wikipedia on Wikimedia
4. Miss Lube Rack
An Oldsmobile dealership in Los Angeles held a promotional beauty contest in 1951, assigning each contestant a different department of the business. One ended up representing the lube rack and posed in a swimsuit in the service bay, surrounded by mechanics. A Life photographer captured the scene, and the picture has circulated online for decades, often with the woman mistakenly identified as a famous actress.
5. Miss Wool Of America
San Angelo, Texas, started this as a state contest in 1952 and opened it nationally in 1958. Sheep and wool trade groups put up the money, and whoever won spent a year touring in the newest woolen fashions. The 1968 edition went out live on color television. The pageant ran twenty years and ended in 1972.
6. Alice In Dairyland
Wisconsin created the Alice in Dairyland title for its 1948 centennial, choosing a recent high school graduate as its first winner. She even got a ten-foot mechanical statue of herself at the state exposition. The program is still running, although the job has changed considerably. Today's applicants need four years of relevant education, work experience, or a combination of both.
U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wikimedia
7. Miss Drumsticks
Yellville, Arkansas, has held its Turkey Trot festival since the 1940s, and one of its stranger traditions is a beauty contest judged entirely on contestants' legs. Faces and upper bodies stay hidden behind a turkey cutout while the judges make their decisions. Photographs of the competition go back to the early 1950s.
8. Artichoke Queen
Castroville, California, named Marilyn Monroe its Artichoke Queen in 1948, several years before she became a major Hollywood star. She was visiting nearby Salinas to fill in for another actress at a jewelry-store promotion when local artichoke growers decided to give her the title.
Teichnor Bros., Boston on Wikimedia
9. Tobacco Queen
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, crowned Evelyn Ay its Tobacco Queen in 1950, complete with a crown made to resemble tobacco leaves. She also won a local fair title that year and kept entering competitions. In 1953, she won Miss Pennsylvania and went on to become Miss America 1954.
10. Honey Queen
Wisconsin beekeepers established a honey queen program in the 1950s, and the first American Honey Queen was crowned in 1959. The title still exists, although candidates now need to understand beekeeping well enough to explain it to the public. Winners visit schools, give presentations, and promote honey production around the country.
11. Sweater Queen
The Wool Bureau and the National Knitted Outerwear Foundation crowned Jeanne Davis of Alabama as Sweater Queen in 1952. Both organizations represented businesses that wanted Americans buying more knitted clothing, and putting a pretty woman in a sweater was an easy way to get newspaper coverage.
12. Donut Queen
Nineteen-year-old Joy Harman was crowned New York City's Donut Queen at a USO event in 1957. She was chosen to represent the city in a national contest, so there was more to it than someone handing her a sash for a photograph. Donut queens had already been appearing at promotional events throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s.
13. Mink Queen
In 1960, the West Side Fur Company in Manhattan presented actress Julia Meade as its Mink Queen. She posed surrounded by mink pelts, giving photographers exactly the kind of picture a furrier wanted in the newspapers. There doesn't appear to have been a formal contest behind the title.
Charles Caron from New York City on Wikimedia
14. Blueberry Queen
A Blueberry Queen posed in a bathtub filled with blueberries at New York's Hotel Roosevelt in June 1955. Instead of sitting beside a few neat baskets of fruit, she was photographed practically buried in the berries. Fruit growers regularly crowned queens to promote their harvests, but this was a more elaborate publicity stunt than most.
15. Miss Food Industry
Around 1951, Bettie Page appeared in photographs carrying the title Miss Food Industry. Nobody had bothered narrowing it down to a particular product. The entire food business apparently qualified for one beauty queen. Page was still building the modeling career that would make her one of America's best-known pin-ups.
16. Miss Magic Marker
A 1954 publicity photograph shows a woman wearing the title Miss Magic Marker, with the initials MM painted across her chest. Apparently, even a brand of writing instruments could have its own beauty queen. Details about how she was chosen are scarce, but the photograph survives.
17. Miss Lovely Eyes
A beauty contest in Florida around 1930 judged women on their eyes alone. Contestants wore masks covering nearly their entire faces, leaving just their eyes visible so the judges couldn't consider anything else. The surviving photograph looks more like a gathering of masked strangers than a traditional pageant.
18. Miss Atomic Bomb
Las Vegas found a way to turn nearby nuclear tests into tourist attractions, and in 1957 a Sands Hotel showgirl posed as Miss Atomic Bomb. She wore a swimsuit decorated with a large cotton mushroom cloud for a publicity photograph that became famous. Her stage name was Lee Merlin, although her real identity remained uncertain for decades.
Quinn Dombrowski from Berkeley, USA on Wikimedia
19. Queen Of Candy
At the 1964 New York World's Fair, actress Joi Lansing appeared as Queen of Candy outside the Chunky Candy Pavilion. The exhibit had a working candy factory where visitors could watch chocolate bars being made and packaged. Lansing made appearances at special events, including one photographed in the rain.
20. Miss Flowers Of '54
Oregon florists got their own representative in 1954 when Portland television station KPTV organized a contest decided by a public newspaper vote. Seventeen-year-old Dorothy Johnson won and became the industry's official theme girl for the following year. She later won Miss Oregon and finished as first runner-up at the 1956 Miss America pageant.
