Compelling Yet Tedious: Here She Is by Hilary Levey Friedman

Series: Standalone

Release Date: August 25, 2020

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Note: I received Here She Is through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to FSB Association for the opportunity.

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I am glad that I decided to read Here She Is. I’m not usually one for history books/analysis. But, detailing America’s pageant history in parallel to the women’s rights movement demonstrates how feminism can include many different types of activities that share the same goal: empowering women and fighting for gender equality.

The author, Friedman, does an excellent job of chronicling the first two waves of feminism and centring pageantry within these two big pushes for women’s equality. Friedman demonstrates how mothers carrying their babies on-stage in ‘best baby’ competitions in the late 1800s was the start of women’s bodies being accepted into the public sphere.

Increasing women’s visibility in public and stating that women have a right to choose what happens in public life was a significant portion of first-wave feminism. First-wave feminism is recognized as the suffragist movement–women fighting for the right to vote.

The mid-1900s brought second-wave feminism, which sought to demonstrate how “the personal is political.” The main concern was that the ideal woman was still thought of as strictly a housewife and child-minder. Second-wave feminists were also frustrated with the objectifying and sexist beauty standards imposed on women. These second-wave feminists’ concerns converged with pageantry during the Miss America 1968 protest, where the New York Radical Women (feminist) group symbolically “burned” their bras as a rejection of painful societal requirements of women. Ironically, Here She Is factually demonstrates how ‘bra burners’ is a misnomer: the New York Radical Women burned no bras.

Herstory

her•sto•ry /ˈhərstərē/
(noun)
history viewed from a female or specifically feminist perspective.
Definition from Oxford Languages

I was introduced to the word ‘herstory’ in Here She Is and was incredibly intrigued by how recounts of history change as historians centre women’s voices and experiences. I loved when Friedman delved into specific women’s personal history (and experiences) within this book. I found these stories a nice break from the dense history.

With her detailed herstory corroborated by interviews she conducted, Friedman convincingly debunks the stereotypes and lousy rep that pageantry has. Friedman even demonstrates how there is no correlation between pageant contestants and an increased disposition to eating disorders. Friedman also reaffirmed how the main reason contestants still do pageants is for the scholarship money–something that I was only vaguely aware was linked to pageant winners. Even at the state and county levels, the scholarships available can be enough to fund a year of university education. Winners and resulting runner-ups can win scholarships that fund the entirety of an undergraduate degree.

Comparing the herstory of pageantry to the women’s rights movement doesn’t show the complete picture as feminist organizations at the time were comprised of white, non-disabled and upper-middle-class women. Importantly, Friedman acknowledges that pageantry in the US centres white women.

By acknowledging the racist history of both aspects of Friedman’s analysis of herstory (American beauty pageants and mainstream feminism), she brings in how minority groups created their pageants. Pageants centring minority identities allowed women of colour to centre traits that were being discriminated against in mainstream pageants (and ignored by White feminism). Some pageants that sprung up in the 60s include Miss Black USA, and others started later on, including Miss Deaf America.

While mainstream pageantry has slowly become more racially and ethnically diverse over the ~100 years, there is still one area that has not changed in recent years: contestants’ size. Friedman makes sure to point out that while the average woman (nowadays) has been getting a bit bigger, pageant contestants (and winners) have been getting even smaller.

Pageantry and Feminism

Friedman includes commentary from her students stating pageant contestants (including child pageant contestants) shouldn’t be critiqued for their decision to take part in pageantry. As Friedman demonstrates, pageantry is an (n expensive yet) fun way of playing dress-up for most children. Although, she does admit to having met a few families who do child pageantry for the money. By centring the ‘harmless fun’ and ‘pursuing education’ narratives (both of which are true and corroborated by research), it was easier to understand why girls continue to be contestants in something that is seen as objectifying of women to outsiders.

Though, my largest complaint was discovering Friedman is a believer in there being only three waves of feminism and not four. Traditionally, in International Relations academia, feminism is thought to be broken into the following four waves:

• First Wave – Suffragist Movement (Getting the vote)
• Second Wave – Personal is Political: focuses on equality and discrimination (in the workplace)
• Third Wave – Identity Politics (How a person’s identities–race, gender, sex, ethnicity, religion and more–can compound the discrimination they face
• Fourth Wave – Empowerment of women and centring of intersectionality
  • Looking at the pay gap, rape culture, sexual harassment, #MeToo and the use of social media in this fight

Looking at the pay gap, rape culture, sexual harassment, #MeToo, and social media use in this fight, Friedman argued identity politics, what I call third-wave feminism above, is Part 2 to the second-wave. I understand that for the ease of her research, allocating 50 years into three waves allowed for her book’s “clean” linear organization.

However, I take issues with suggesting identity politics is a tagalong to second-wave feminism. Especially when third-wave feminism (identity politics) erupted as a critique to second-wave feminism: that it focused only on white, heterosexual, able, middle-class (and upward) women.

Third-wave feminism, as I define identity politics, is also when the voices of Black and Indigenous women and women of Colour started to become centred. Taking away the autonomy of their critique and adding it to the end of a white-centred feminism wave misunderstands the critiques of third-wave feminism.

Pageantry’s Relationship with U.S. Politics

Most of the book details the herstory of pageantry and, as a result, spends a significant amount of its pages discussing pageantry from 1840 to the late 1990s. As a result, it can feel a bit dense if you don’t naturally like reading history.

In Conclusion

I learned so much about beauty pageants in America. The most important takeaway was how the representation of beauty pageants in the media (and popular culture) is the most dramatic and worst part of pageantry.

Friedman resoundingly demonstrates how pageants started as a way for women to take pride in their bodies. Pageants have also been reclaimed as a way for minorities to highlight and celebrate their identities which mainstream pageants have, historically, excluded. However, Friedman states that lesbians are the few women who are still widely excluded from beauty pageants (they’re even excluded in pageants created to celebrate minority identities).

My last critique of Here She Is is that while Friedman was convincing in demonstrating how pageantry has been used to uplift women in the public sphere, I would’ve liked the author’s opinion on pageantry to have been discussed. In her introduction and throughout her novel, Friedman comments that she loved watching pageants as a kid with her mom. But, I’d be interested to know how she thinks pageantry fits within today’s world, especially within the 21st-century feminist movement.

Here She Is is a reminder to self-described feminists that part of the feminist fight is that women have the choice to do whatever they want, even if that means becoming a beauty queen.

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