Ain't I a Beauty Queen? : Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race

Black is Beautiful! The words were the exuberant rallying cry of a generation of black women who threw away their straightening combs and adopted a proud new style they called the Afro. The Afro, as worn most famously by Angela Davis, became a veritable icon of the Sixties. Although the new beauty standards seemed to arise overnight, they actually had deep roots within black communities. Tracing her story to 1891, when a black newspaper launched a contest to find the most beautiful woman of the race, Maxine Leeds Craig documents how black women have negotiated the intersection of race, class, politics, and personal appearance in their lives. Craig takes the reader from beauty parlors in the 1940s to late night political meetings in the 1960s to demonstrate the powerful influence of social movements on the experience of daily life. With sources ranging from oral histories of Civil Rights and Black Power Movement activists and men and women who stood on the sidelines to black popular magazines and the black movement press, Ain't I a Beauty Queen? will fascinate those interested in beauty culture, gender, class, and the dynamics of race and social movements. "Black is Beautiful!" The words were the exuberant rallying cry of a generation of black women who threw away their straightening combs and adopted a proud new style they called the Afro. The Afro, as worn most famously by Angela Davis, became a veritable icon of the Sixties. Although the new beauty standards seemed to arise overnight, they actually had deep roots within black communities. Tracing her story to 1891, when a black newspaper launched a contest to find the most beautiful woman of the race, Maxine Leeds Craig documents how black women have negotiated the intersection of race, class, politics, and personal appearance in their lives. Craig takes the reader from beauty parlors in the 1940s to late night political meetings in the 1960s to demonstrate the powerful influence of social movements on the experience of daily life. With sources ranging from oral histories of Civil Rights and Black Power Movement activists and men and women who stood on the sidelines to black popular magazines and the black movement press, Ain't I a Beauty Queen? will fascinate those interested in beauty culture, gender, class, and the dynamics of race and social movements. CONTENTS......Page 10 ONE: Ridicule and Celebration: Black Women as Symbols in the Rearticulation of Race......Page 14 TWO: Contexts for the Emergence of “Black Is Beautiful,"......Page 34 THREE: Ain’t I a Beauty Queen? Representing the Ideal Black Woman......Page 56 FOUR: Standing (in Heels) for My People......Page 76 FIVE: How Black Became Popular: Social Movements and Racial Rearticulation......Page 89 SIX: Yvonne’s Wig: Gender and the Racialized Body......Page 120 SEVEN: Pride and Shame: Black Women as Symbols of the “Middle Class,”......Page 140 EIGHT: The Appearance of Unity......Page 154 NINE: An Ongoing Dialogue......Page 172 NOTES......Page 182 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY......Page 198 C......Page 206 I......Page 207 O......Page 208 Y......Page 209 The meanings and practices of racial identity are continually reshaped as a result of the interplay of actions taken at the individual and institutional levels. This text is a study of African American women as symbols, and as participants, in the reshaping of the meaning of African American racial identity In September 1968, as a panel of beauty experts prepared to select the forty-eight consecutive white Miss America, two protests were under way.