Photo Credit | © Afia Ofori-Mensa

How to Win a Beauty Contest
(Not an Instruction Manual)

A Twentieth-Century History of the United States through Pageantry

How to Win a Beauty Contest is a social history of the United States of America, and its changing place in the world, over the course of the twentieth century. From the first contest in 1921 that would become the Miss America Pageant, through the rise of Disney-fueled princess culture in the 1990s, the book examines relationships among race, femininity, and national identity in the United States. By spotlighting a number of key moments, or “firsts”, in national beauty pageantry, the book explores transformations in the social, cultural, and political landscape of the U.S. across decades. How to Win a Beauty Contest traces 100 years of shifting ideals of race, immigration, womanhood, and Americanness in the nation, alongside shifting visions of the role of the U.S. in an increasingly globalized world.

About the Author

Afia Ofori-Mensa holds a PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan, with a focus on race, gender, and popular culture. Her doctoral dissertation examined relationships among race, gender, and national identity in beauty pageantry. She is an expert in the field, who has been studying beauty for over 20 years. She has spent much of that time conducting historical, photographic, and ethnographic research on beauty pageants in particular. She has researched over a dozen pageants on the West Coast, East Coast, Midwest, Southwest, and in Southern México – traveling to interview pageant contestants, directors, staff members, sponsors, and judges. She served for half a decade on the volunteer staff of the Miss Asian America pageant and later as a judge for the Miss Asian Global pageant, which took place virtually during the CoViD-19 pandemic. She has also been a pageant contestant and came in first runner-up to Miss Black Michigan USA (also virtually) in 2007.

Dr. Ofori-Mensa is a nationally sought-after scholar of pageantry. She was a professor of American studies and African American studies for a decade, during which time she designed the pioneering pageant history course, How to Win a Beauty Pageant, which she taught at both Oberlin College and the University of Michigan. The course has been featured in various media outlets including BuzzFeed, Mental Floss, Steve Harvey, and New Hampshire Public Radio. She was interviewed by Robert Siegel for On Point on National Public Radio (NPR), alongside former Miss America and Miss America Organization Chairwoman, Gretchen Carlson. Dr. Ofori-Mensa was also interviewed, together with playwright Jocelyn Bioh, for the Broadway World podcast Why We Theater. Dr. Ofori-Mensa appears as an expert in the documentary film There She Is and in a forthcoming documentary on the global politics of beauty, directed by Emmy- and Tony-award winning filmmaker, Dori Berinstein.

Dr. Ofori-Mensa is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she received her BA summa cum laude with distinction in English. As a Ford Foundation Fellow, she earned her MA and PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan. She worked for nearly a decade as a professor of Comparative American Studies and Africana Studies at Oberlin College, where she also served as Assistant Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and Director of Undergraduate Research. She currently works as a Lecturer in Humanistic Studies, and Director of Equitable Postgraduate Academic Opportunity in the Emma Bloomberg Center for Access & Opportunity, at Princeton University.

Market

In the current market, retrospective histories of U.S. cultural institutions that emerged within the past 100 years are in vogue. The Miss America program recently celebrated a century in existence, and the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants will turn 75 in 2027. This book will engage general audiences interested in its subject matter of pageantry, popular culture, race and racism, immigration, U.S. women’s history, and histories of U.S. empire. Target audiences include individuals directly associated with pageantry – current and past pageant participants (i.e., self-identified “pageant girls”), pageant organizers, pageantry enthusiasts, and pageant historians. Given that a number of its chapters examine Cold War U.S. culture and politics, the book will also be of interest to cultural historians of the Cold War, as well as to Americans who grew up during the Cold War period–now in the age range of approximately 40 to 90 years old. As a book that takes a feminist approach to its analysis, the text will also resonate with U.S. and non-U.S. women and girls, ages 15-75, who identify with feminism and appreciate feminist takes on the study of women’s history. With this book’s focus on Black and Asian American women, race, and racism, the stories in the book will likely connect with readers of color between the ages of 15 and 75, who either came of age in the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, or who represent younger generations that are now learning about the efforts of their political forebears. The reading public’s interest in the origins of whiteness and racism in the U.S., which grew dramatically after the summer of 2020, creates an opportunity for the success of this book at this moment.