Being Miss America

Behind the Rhinestone Curtain

Preview

Failed to add items

Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.

Add to basket failed.

Please try again later

Add to wishlist failed.

Please try again later

Remove from wishlist failed.

Please try again later

Adding to library failed

Please try again

Follow podcast failed

Unfollow podcast failed

LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free

Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.

Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.

Access exclusive sales and deals.

Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

Being Miss America

By: Kate Shindle

Narrated by: Kathleen Godwin

Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £14.99

No valid payment method on file.

Add payment method

Switch payment method

We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method

Switch payment method

Pay using card ending in

Switch payment method

By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Cancel

About this listen

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.

Entertainment & Celebrities

Gender Studies

Social Sciences

Women

Celebrity

Witty