My research question: How have beauty pageants (Miss America specifically) transitioned throughout history in terms of race, weight, gender, etc and why? Does this change lead to a positive or negative outcome?

The Politics of Sex, Beauty, and Race in America’s Most Famous Pageant

First Black Girl Wins Miss American Crown

The first link is a book titled “There She Is, Miss America”:The Politics of Sex, Beauty, and Race in America’s Most Famous Pageant written by Elwood Watson and Darcy Martin. It explores the scandals, praises, and changes that have occurred throughout history in this pageant starting from the very first one up until present day. It was the first published book to critique the pageant therefore got a lot of criticism from contestants and pageant judges/supporters alike, however, I am confident this book holds the truth rather than sugar coating what goes on behind the scenes of Miss America.

The second link is an archive I found in George Mason’s database titled “First Black Girl Wins Miss American Crown” that was written in 1983 in The Times. I thought this article was interesting because most of society knows who Vanessa Williams is, however, most of us, including myself, do not know she was the first black woman crowned in the Miss America pageant! Even more interesting than that, the runner-up was also African American. Although this article doesn’t go into much detail, it is the shift that led many other women of different races, ethnicities, and cultures to compete despite the previous assumption that only traditional “white” women can compete/win.

The last two images are from Flickr Commons and they are pictures of the first Miss America winner, Margaret Gorman in 1921. She was first named Miss Washington DC until the year after they had another Miss Washington DC, therefore they changed her title to Miss America. In one photo she is shown with her dog and in the other with fellow contestants.

“We don’t want to talk you out of digitizing the past, but rather encourage you to carefully weigh the problems and expenses against the benefits.”

In this Digital History document, the quote above stuck out to me because although it started off saying we don’t want to talk you out of digitalizing the past- that seems to be exactly what they are doing. I, however, am on the fence on this subject. I thought it was interesting that Pierre-Charles L’Enfant’s original plans for the city of Washington are so fragile that they cannot be physically handled but are on the Internet for any average Joe to examine. When I entered this subject into the search engine bar, the majority of links were written in third person rather than in L’Enfant’s own handwriting as it is in the Library of Congress. This particular transformation into digitalization lost some of its antiqueness and value when printed onto a web page rather than written in first person point of view on the original paper. Conversely, digitalizing this document now makes it possible, as stated before, for individuals to look at it since it can no longer be touched.

Digitalizing important pieces of history allows society to be informed and educated about topics that otherwise might have never been explored had they never been put on the web. L’Enfant’s document is only available in Washington DC and before being digitalized, could only been viewed by those who had the money, vehicle, and accessibility to visit the Library of Congress. Using myself as a prime example, I had no idea a document of this sorts even existed, nonetheless, had never heard of a man named L’Enfant until I read this document and did some minimal research. Digitalizing the past is an easier and faster way to do research without the tedious process of scanning through encyclopedias, traveling to different libraries, etc while still learning the facts.

On the other hand, I can see where this method gets sticky due to the immense amount of people that have access to update the Internet and provide false information on a subject. This however, can be easily avoided if one knows how to test the validity of a website and author and the correct way to conduct research, which is something I hope to learn on improving in this class!

Although I was skeptical about watching an animated video that described the history of the Internet, I was immediately intrigued. About two minutes in, I was fascinated that the Internet was conjured during the Cold War in 1957, however not actually acted upon successfully until 1970. This was interesting to me when described that the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency invented this communication tactic after the first Sputnik was released into space. It is amazing that this creation  has grown to be one of the most popular, if not the most in the near future, means of communication, social networking, education, etc.

Just as all other inventions during this time period, the United States and Soviet Union were fighting idealistically over not only who could produce the newest technology, but who would be the first to actually use these devices, such as nuclear weapons. In spite of this war being mainly between the US and USSR, England and France also built onto this conception, leading to the four major domains of the early Internet. These foundations that are now our modern Internet are the Arpanet, Rand (military), NPL (commercial), and Cyclades (scientific).

JFK Assassination

Development of bikinis

Progression of make-up