[Magdalen] There She is, Miss Amer . . . Uh Oh

[Jim Guthrie]

Yolande Betbeze Fox, a convent-educated Alabamian who defied convention, 
and set new standards, by refusing to tour the country as Miss America 
of 1951 in revealing bathing suits, died on Monday in Washington. She 
was 87.

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Her death was confirmed by the Joseph Gawler’s Sons funeral home in 
Washington.

By the time Ms. Fox won her title on Sept. 9, 1950, in Atlantic City, 
pageant officials, trying to calibrate propriety and sex appeal amid 
changing mores, had already decided to stop crowning Miss America while 
she was wearing a swimsuit. That pageant staple had been confined to the 
swimsuit competition, an event Ms. Fox — Ms. Betbeze at the time — had 
already won. She began her reign in a gown.

But given that the swimsuit competition’s chief sponsor, Catalina, 
manufactured swimwear, Ms. Fox was still expected to model bathing suits 
as the reigning Miss America.

What the organizers did not expect was her response. “Yolande declared, 
‘I’m an opera singer, not a pinup!’ and refused posing in a bathing suit 
again,” according to her official biography on the pageant’s website 
<http://www.missamerica.org/our-miss-americas/1950/1951.aspx>.

As a result, Catalina withdrew as the pageant sponsor and began the 
rival Miss USA contest.

And she led a really remarkable life after that . . , Civil Rights, 
Anti-War etc. .

Read it All:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/yolande-betbeze-fox-miss-america-who-defied-convention-dies-at-87.html

Cheers,
Jim Guthrie