AllMovie

This documentary follows the feminist protests against the Miss California pageant being held in Santa Cruz in 1985 and the arguments for and against beauty pageants. Among the issues examined is the esthetic which favors thin women and labels them as beautiful, denying that epithet for normal and full-figured women. The history of ideals of feminine beauty in America, and the role that beauty pageants have played in establishing the norms for it is another issue. In the short run, the protestors, who included a former model among them, won. The pageant was held somewhere else. However, the larger issues guiding the protest have never been addressed in any serious way, and most media coverage of such dissent has pictured the protesting feminists as merely colorful, strident, out of touch with American values, or even deluded