AMERICA GOT TALENT!

A nation governed by reason should include in its constitution a provision against the supervision of beauty contests by women. Women dominate the executive direction and management of the Miss America contest, and they have of course, ruined it. When it began it was fairly simple: good-looking girls in bathing suit paraded before judges until one of them was declared winner. Today, partially in order to drag the proceedings out sufficiently long to justify a $60 000 TV fee and to turn the house over three times, the girls are judged in three categories; in bathing suits, in evening gowns, and for something called talent. The bondaries of this latter category can be stretched to accomodate the ability to break four balloons the width of the stage away with seven arrows. Contestants have been known to sing, dance, «recite» trampoline-tumble and even crochet.

-The Miss America Joke
Playboy magazine
September 1959