ABSTRACT
In a widely covered media event, advocates for women’s liberation protested the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City on September 7, 1968. Cosmetics industry giant Helena Rubenstein was quoted to have once famously said, “there are no ugly women, only lazy ones.” According to this mantra, any woman could achieve beauty if she truly aspired to obtain it. In earlier periods, American beauty standards were set by Europeans, despite the diversity of the population. Discontent found within the generally conservative middle-class readership of Ebony magazine, in addition to more liberal black periodicals, demonstrates that the black middle class rejected white beauty standards decades before “Black Power” of the mid-1960s. Although women of color had made inroads into beauty contests, minority models were offered few opportunities in men’s magazines. African American periodicals celebrated black women’s achievements in masculine sports like roller derby and wrestling with far less discussion of femininity and beauty than their white media counterparts.
