Drag Queens and Beauty Queens

By Laurie Greene,

Book cover of Drag Queens and Beauty Queens: Contesting Femininity in the World's Playground

Book description

The Miss America pageant has been held in Atlantic City for the past hundred years, helping to promote the city as a tourist destination. But just a few streets away, the city hosts a smaller event that, in its own way, is equally vital to the local community: the Miss’d…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Drag Queens and Beauty Queens as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Drag pageantry owes a lot to Miss America, especially an Atlantic City pageant called Miss’d America. Greene documents the symbiotic relationship between the Atlantic City gayborhood that spawned this contest and the Miss America Pageant, where many gay locals worked as stylists, dancers, and on production crews behind the scenes. Launched in 1993, Miss’d America unified this community in response to the AIDS crisis and offered an alternative pageant for people who’d missed the real deal. Greene couches Miss’d America in the context of Atlantic City’s fascinating drag history going back to the turn of the century (because what better…

From Margot's list on how the Miss America pageant was born.

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