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Title: Being Miss America

Subtitle: Behind the Rhinestone Curtain

Author: Kate Shindle

Narrator: Kathleen Godwin

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-10-17

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Celebrities

Publisher's Summary:

In Being Miss America, Kate Shindle interweaves an engrossing, witty memoir of her year as Miss America 1998 with a fascinating and insightful history of the pageant. She explores what it means to take on the mantle of America's "ideal", especially considering the evolution of the American female identity since the pageant's inception. Shindle profiles winners and organization leaders and recounts important moments in the pageant's story, with a special focus on Miss America's iconoclasts, including Bess Myerson (1945), the only Jewish Miss America; Yolande Betbeze (1951), who crusaded against the pageant's pinup image; and Kaye Lani Rae Rafko (1987), a working-class woman from Michigan who wanted to merge her famous title with her work as an oncology nurse. Shindle's own account of her work as an AIDS activist - and finding ways to circumvent the "gown and crown" stereotypes of Miss America in order to talk honestly with high school students about safer sex - illuminates both the challenges and the opportunities that keep young women competing to become Miss America.

Critic Reviews:

"A captivating cultural history of the last 100 years in America through the lens of the Miss America Pageant..." (

Library Journal)

Members Reviews:

She builds wisely on his work and others but has a modern take on what it's like to be a college student one day and on ...

There's some real responsibility in being the first review! Kate has brought an insider's perspective as a former Miss America to something some of us care deeply about (recognizing we are a minority) and struggle with how to bring about change to the organization, brand, and experience. Kate had big shoes to fill from the much-revered, irreverent- yet- insightful, now 'historic' tome from Frank DeFord in 1971. She builds wisely on his work and others but has a modern take on what it's like to be a college student one day and on the road for a year another, following byzantine rules about what you can say about AIDS in school visits and trying to keep out of trouble with 'the front office'. Loved her commentary about the insidious and negative atmosphere online in 'pageant chat rooms' which recent Miss Americas, Miss States, and others are trying to change. As a thirty plus year volunteer who's agonized over many of the same issues she presents and spends too much of my time apologizing for sticking it out, I really appreciate how brave this book was and how necessary. This year isn't covered in the book but has been a very difficult one with judging/auditing and rule difficulties and the death knell for Atlantic City's once prospering casinos so I hope Kate will be in town to weigh in. A long time ago a journalist wrote "I can hardly bear to watch, but I do...the show is awful...the young women are wonderful." Indeed, the women are wonderful!

Honest, Thorough Story About Miss America -- the Organization and the Contestants

Although I've been a Miss America addict and actually have tapes of some of my favorite Miss America pageants and have watched them over and over, I wondered whether Kate Shindle's book would be disappointing.