Ben Denckla
Final Paper
Women's Studies 10a
TF: Amy
Agigian
January 13, 1995
Introduction
In the newspapers ... it was reported that two polar bears in the Brooklyn Zoo mauled to death an eleven-year-old boy who had entered their cage to swim in the moat. The police were called and the bears were killed.In the public debate that ensued, many levels of meaning emerged. The rhetoric firmly established that the bears were innocent, naturally territorial, unfairly imprisoned, and guilty. The dead child (born into the urban jungle of a black, welfare mother and a hispanic alcoholic father who had died literally in the gutter only six weeks before) was held to a similarly stern standard....
In the egalitarianism of exile, pluralists rose up as of one body, with a call to buy more bears, control juvenile delinquency, eliminate all zoos, and confine future police. {292}
In the excerpt above, Patricia Williams gives an example of the way media events provide forums for our society to confront and debate broad social issues. The mauling was definitely not taken at face value: a rich set of suggested implications and interpretations emerged, creating a discursive space wide enough to encompass juvenile delinquency, the proper role of the police, and the morality of animal captivity.
There are many examples of recent media events that have functioned similarly. Without Lorena Bobbit, how could marital rape become a focus of public attention? How could men confront castration anxiety except by making Bobbit jokes as a kind of counterphobic exercise? Without Anita Hill, how could we talk about sexual harassment? How can we address any abstract anxiety or problem without such media events? They form the currency of our consciousness, and provide a set of myths for our past. It was this mythical quality that drew me to the subject of Vanessa Williams' "exposure" in Penthouse magazine. It's a "fall from grace" or "majesty undone" myth, and a good one at that, since everyone seems to remember it today, more than a decade later.
Williams gained a great deal of media attention because she won the Miss America Pageant in 1983 and, a little less than a year later, appeared in sexually suggestive photos in Penthouse. This paper analyzes reactions to Williams that were reported in or appeared directly in print media. I hope to show how Williams functioned as a site of contention where various voices were heard staking out their ideological territory and expressing their anxieties about issues of race and pornography.
A Brief History
Mar 18 '63: Williams is born.
Summer '82: Williams poses nude for photographer Tom Chiapel in a solo session and in a session with model Ami Geier. She also poses nude for photographer Gregg Whitman.
Sep 17 '83: Williams is crowned Miss America. She is the first black Miss America.
Jul 13 '84: Williams receives an anonymous phone call informing her of a rumor that she will be pictured nude in the September Penthouse.
Jul 19 '84: The story of Williams' imminent appearance in Penthouse goes public.
Jul 20 '84: Miss America officials ask Williams to resign within 72 hours.
Jul 23 '84: Williams resigns as Miss America. The September issue of Penthouse, featuring Chiapel's pictures of Williams, appears on newsstands.
Aug 24 '84: Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione announces that the January Penthouse will feature the photos of Williams taken by Whitman.
Sep 8 '84: Williams files suit against Chiapel on the basis that she did not sign a model's release form.
Sep '84: The November issue of Penthouse comes out, featuring two more photos of Williams from the Chiapel sessions.
Dec '84: The January issue of Penthouse comes out, featuring photos from the Whitman session.
Race: Trouble from the Start
Before it was bared, Williams' skin was black. And even before she won, blackness was already an issue at the `83 Miss America Pageant.
[I]n '83 minority participation in the pageant was still such a novelty that a good deal of press attention was focused on the unprecedented number of no fewer than four black candidates. . . . The four women were asked to pose together so often that they began to joke about it, and the question that Miss Williams remembers being asked most often was what it felt like to have a chance to become the first black Miss America. In answer to one such query, she responded, "Ideally, a black Miss America could be a role model for all young women in America, not just minorities." {Curr 455-6}
Right from the start we can see Williams resisting exclusive categorization as black, in this case preferring a general gender identification rather than one that is intersected with race. Once she won, the resistance continued, often with Williams asserting her individual identity and merit above her race identity.
"I don't think they chose me because I'm black and it's time for a black Miss America. They chose me because they thought I could do the job." {Curr 456:1}"People and the press aren't focusing on me as a person, they're focusing on my being black." {Curr 456:1}
As for being the first black Miss America, she said, "It feels great. But I don't feel any different than the other Miss Americas. Why should I feel different because of my appearance?" {Globe2}
Right off, Vanessa Williams, the 56th Miss America and the first black, was subjected to considerably more attention than Miss Americas in the recent past.... Absent now were the questions about the "ideal man." Hell, this was political! Williams, in turn, showed the inquisitors that "first Women" these days come with a sting. "I was chosen because I was qualified for the position," she said. "The fact that I was black was not a factor." {Time1 10:1}
The last quote above portrays typical questions about the ideal man as being absent due to the political (i.e. raced) nature of Williams' victory, suggesting that Williams' blackness occasionally eclipsed not just her individuality but even her gender. In addition, some anxiety about assertiveness on the part of women pops out from the text in reference to the "sting" that "first Women" come with "these days." I say this because the quote that supposedly demonstrates this "sting" is, though perhaps naïve[1], not particularly harsh.
Despite Williams' complaints that her race and not her merit as an individual were being stressed, I did run across a quite different interpretation of things in an article about Williams and two other black "firsts" who "failed":
[S]ome whites .... consistently described these women as "exceptions," as, in other words, a kind of aberration in the supposed black norm of underachievers. When these women won, they won, we were told, as individuals. {Poussaint}
Not surprisingly, Williams' blackness meant different things to different people. One major interpretation saw Williams as a symbol of enhanced race relations in the U.S. This was President Ronald Reagan's interpretation; when he called Williams to congratulate her, he said, "Your selection is not only a wonderful thing for you, it's a wonderful thing for our nation" {Curr 454}. This interpretation was shared by various black leaders and even Williams herself on occasion {Curr 456:1}, though as we have seen, in general she "played down any racial symbolism" {Gilliam}.
But other interpretations were formed. The excerpts below highlight the different ways in which blackness was constructed so as to include or exclude Williams.
"Growing up in a predominantly white environment, I thought I was just like everyone else," she says. "When I won Miss America, that's when reality set in. I got hate mail from white-supremacist groups and also from blacks who didn't feel I was black enough. I didn't know who I was: she's black, she's not black enough, she's not white so we hate her." {News3 :2-3}
Pointing to [Williams'] straight hair, light skin, and middle-class suburban background, CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] spokesmen charged that she was not a representative product of the black community. {Curr 456:1}
Note how in the following anecdote, Williams' questionable blackness valorizes her in the eyes of a Hollywood agent, but, in context, the anecdote could easily be seen to imply that she is something negative, "a black version of a white woman," trapped in a categorical void.
Ms. Ferrell described herself as "an ethnic black: a dark-skinned black woman and not a black version of a white woman." She said the distinction is not insignificant. A few years ago, after a screening of a television movie she was in, she recalled, "an agent pulled me aside and said, `You were obviously the most talented. But you're a nigger black, and Hollywood likes the Vanessa Williams type.'" {NYT1}
Williams responds to criticisms of her insufficient blackness in the following excerpt.
"Now I'm getting letters from blacks in Nigeria who say they never thought a black would ever be considered attractive. And there are those who say I'm not typically black. But what is typically black? People who say there are stereotype blacks are bigots.""I like sincere men, intelligent ones. I like to see genuine warmth. I still have a boyfriend I keep in contact with over the phone. I would marry outside my race. Race and religion have never been issues with me." {Globe3}
There are a number of noteworthy aspects of the excerpt above. First of all, the fact that some Nigerians identified strongly enough with her to write fan mail is an interesting counterweight her rejection by CORE, since if anyone can lay claim to "authentic" blackness, it would be Africans. Also note that questions about the "ideal man" did indeed crop up (I'm assuming that this article was the result of an interview, though no questions are shown). But even this discussion veers off (presumably on the initiative of the interviewer) towards the race of her "ideal man."
Race: In the Wake of Penthouse
By no means did Williams' blackness become submerged in the furor over sexual mores that resulted from the Penthouse pictures. Presumably seeing the issue as one in which race was still important, "black leaders [such] as Jesse Jackson and Benjamin Hooks rall[ied] to the defense of Vanessa Williams" {Curr 457:1}, and though when she had won "some blacks complained that her mulatto looks didn't represent them," when the Penthouse pictures came out "some of her detractors ... embrac[ed] Williams as a sister in trouble" {Gilliam}. Again, opinion was far from unanimous: Williams was also "attacked by blacks who called her a blot on her race" {Peop2 36}.
Two articles (both written by black women) voiced concerns about the effect of the Penthouse incident in terms of the loss of a role model for young black women and in terms of its reinforcement of regressive stereotypes of black women.
I was sorry because of all those young black girls who had looked to Vanessa Williams as a role model, only to have the rug pulled out from under them. And I was sorry because I knew that those who still cling to the comfort of their warm, familiar racism in this country had just gotten what they felt was some more ammunition in what has been a steadily dwindling arsenal. {Poussaint}
Donald Bogle [wrote]: "In the eyes of the white world, the black woman was never thought of as pretty.... At best, she was considered little more than a lusty sexual object...." ....
That Vanessa Williams ... lost [her] crown over sexually explicit nude photographs ... brings up the old ghosts. It hurts because it raises the fear that the old images might again rise from the ashes--before they had been totally put to rest.
That she had been hailed as a particularly "exemplary" queen ... only makes her fall more keenly felt by black women who are trying hard to exert a sense of self....
Failure of a black "first" hits in a special way the people whose hopes are symbolized. {Gilliam}
While Gilliam's article discusses the sense of loss that black women experienced due to Williams' loss, the excerpt below shows how Poussaint specifically rejects such a notion and implies it to be racist, though her comment about "all those young black girls" above seems to undercut this position.
[W]hen they[2] lost .... It somehow was pictured as a loss for every black male and particularly every black female in this country.Take Vanessa Williams. I've heard the tentative questions from concerned whites about how "black people," especially "black women," are dealing with the "embarrassment" of her dethronement....
Well, I don't know how "black people" or "black women" feel about all that. I do know how I as an individual, feel about what she, as an individual, did. I was sorry about it. But not because it had anything to do with me personally. I was sorry because I hate to see any talented, qualified person seriously hurt by an earlier mistake.
Throughout her article, Poussaint is playing a very tricky game with individual vs. race-sex identity. Above, Poussaint, like Williams, asserts an individual rather than race identity for herself. But recall that Poussaint had modeled initial white attention to Williams as racist in its characterization of Williams as an exceptional individual. She describes herself as sorry about [William's resignation] as an individual, but not "because it had anything to do with [her] personally," meaning "as a black woman." At this point her discourse of race-sex vs. individual unwittingly comes undone, since the way she would identify personally (individually?) with Williams would have been as a member of the group of black women. The opposition of group membership vs. individual identity is always destined to fall apart like this since a person's group memberships are always a part of their individual identity.
The section "Racism" in Robin Morgan's article on Williams asks if three facts are mere coincidence. The first fact is that this "scandal" happened to the first black Miss America. Though it seems "too good to be true," I think it was a coincidence. The same thing could have happened to a white Miss America. The discourse surrounding such an alternate version of the scandal would have been devoid of race, but it still would have been a big deal. The second fact whose coincidence we are to contemplate is that "the Pageant boys doubtless heaved a sigh of relief that the runner-up happened also to be a black woman." I think it is no coincidence that the runner-up was black, but is it racist to be relieved that you are less likely to be accused of racism? The third fact we are asked to contemplate is "that all the real perpetrators--Pageant officials, photographer, and Penthouse purveyors--happened to be white men." This is certainly no coincidence, but it is kind of obvious: the U.S. of 1984 was clearly a society dominated by white males, and it's no surprise that control of pageants and pornography lay in their hands. I get the strong sense that Morgan had more desire to find racism and patriarchy in the incident than to make an insightful analysis of it.
Europe and the U.S. cannot really be said to constitute two races, but the issues of difference between these two cultures are similar to those that come up over racial difference. Some such issues of cultural difference come up in People. Gregg Whitman, Williams' second photographer, is portrayed as enticing Williams to model for him by saying "I do a lot of work for the European market. Europeans would love your looks" {Peop2 39:1}. Is this a reference to the exoticism of blackness in Europe? Or is it a reference to William's combined European and African appearance? Either way, this seems innocent enough until we learn that
Whitman began by doing straight photos, then suggested some art photography, European-style. Trying to seem sophisticated, Vanessa[3] agreed. At first Whitman shot her with a long, burgundy scarf wrapped around her otherwise naked body ... {Peop2 39:1-2}
Now we know what "European" means. Its use clearly imputes a moral decadence to the continent. This is an accusation frequently leveled against Europe by Americans, probably as result of a lingering inferiority complex on our part, combined with our curiously long-standing attachment to puritanical sexual values. Some articles about Williams end up taking the reader to the strangest of places!
The Photographs: The Meat of the Matter
Significant choices were involved in deciding how to describe Williams' September Penthouse photos, and a variety of phrases were employed. The following is a sampling of descriptions of the photos, with some categorization imposed on them by me.
1. "some old photos of her, posed in the nude." {Morgan :1}2. "nude photos" {News3, Ebon1,2,3}, "compromising nude photos" {Curr 457:1}, "sexually explicit photos" {Poussaint :1}
3. a. "explicit pictures with lesbian overtones" {News1 :1}, b. "explicitly sexual nude photos with another woman" {Curr 454:1}
4. a. "a series of nude photographs of Vanessa Williams ... posed in lubricious tableaux with another shapely young woman." {Peop2 36:1}, b. "dirty pictures" {Peop2 36:2}, c. "salacious take" {Peop2 36:2}
5. a. "In some of the more startling pictures, Williams and another nude woman appear to be engaged in explicit acts of oral sex." {News1 :1}, b. "Some photos depict Williams being fondled by another woman." {Globe10}
6. "sorry photographs" {Deford}
#1 is a clear attempt on Morgan's part to make the photos seem like no big deal. They're just "some old photos," and the fact that they are "posed in the nude" seems like an afterthought. Group 2 contains the uninflammatory, middle-of-the-road approaches. Group 3 is similar to Group 2 but its phrases mention the other female model. 3a of course drops a little bomb with the word "lesbian."
The quotes in Group 4 all appear on the same page of an article in People. 4a is undoubtedly the most over-the-top description of the photos that I ran into. It is over-the-top not in its explicitness (see 5a for stronger fare), but rather in the amount of fun the author seems to have had while writing it. The high point of the quote is the use of "lubricious." The sound association of "lubricious" with "lubrication" is probably too sexy for most readers to resist, at least on a subconscious level.[4] "Salacious take" is along much the same lines as "lubricious tableaux," and "dirty pictures" feels titillatingly naughty and gradeschoolish. What comes through clearly about all aspects of People's coverage of Williams is that while no moral judgment is made against her, they do thrive off of the scandal/tragedy of it all. But they thrive off the deliciousness of scandal per se, not some notion of scandal as related to morality.[5]
Group 5 wins the prize for suspension of disbelief and 5a in particular wins the prize for graphic description. The article from which 5a came is the only one of my sources that supplements its descriptions of the pictures with an actual cropped version of a Williams-Geier photo.[6] #6 is a mystery to me, and looking at it in context doesn't even help. In what way exactly are the photos "sorry"? "Sorry" used in this way means "inspiring sorrow, pity, scorn, or ridicule," {Webster} but this is a fairly wide range of feeling. Deford seems to be relying on some implicit understanding on the reader's part of which meaning he intends. In this sense it was quite a diplomatic word choice: there's something there for everyone, from the sorrow/pity side of the spectrum to scorn/ridicule.
Another aspect of reaction to the photos is the way Penthouse was described. Most sources just identified it by name with no further comment. Two of the Ebony articles {Ebon1,2} identified it only as "a national men's magazine," in what was perhaps an effort to minimize the incident since we're talking Penthouse here, not GQ. One source {Curr} described Penthouse as "one of the raunchier `skin' magazines." The use of the quoted colloquialism "skin" in place of the more obvious choice, "pornographic" is a mystery to me, though it jives well with the colloquial tone of "raunchier." This description is somewhat overstated, since here "raunchier" really just means more explicit than Playboy, the softest pornographic magazine available (except perhaps the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue). In my estimation, Penthouse represents the rock solid middle of pornographic magazines.
The "erotic art" versus "pornography" question comes up in the discourse surrounding the photos. We have already seen how in People the Whitman photos are referred to derisively as "art photography, European-style" and Williams is portrayed as posing for them in an effort "to seem sophisticated." The narrative of Chiapel's duping of Williams often proceeds along similar lines. Williams tells that Chiapel asked her to pose "in a silhouette art form" with Geier, "assur[ing] us that both of us would be unidentifiable" {Globe11}. People concurred strongly with this version of the narrative: "Chiapel shot a lot of nudes and talked about them in art-school lingo: masses, countermasses, chiaroscuro, interplay of textures. Impressed by the jargon and soon accustomed to the images, Vanessa began to wonder how the lens would see her body. Daring and gullible, she felt sure she could trust Chiapel" {Peop2} I don't contest the notion that both photographers, especially Chiapel, deceived Williams in their assurances of the secrecy of the photos. What is interesting here is the way in which the categorization of the photos as art is represented as a key aspect of the deceptive process.
By this point, a burning question must be on the reader's mind: "Just how `bad' were these pictures?" In order to answer this question, I made an intrepid voyage to the Library of Congress and took a look at the Penthouse issues in question.[7] My frame of reference for determining how `bad' they were comes from my previous understanding and experience of the breadth of pornography as well as the sense of standard Penthouse fare that I acquired from perusing other parts of those issues.
In my opinion, Chiapel's photos are at least on the borderline between pornography and erotic art. I came to this determination mainly by comparing these photos to others surrounding them in the same issue of the magazine to get a sense of standard Penthouse fare. There are a number of factors which set the Chiapel photos apart as more artsy than the standard fare in Penthouse. I am not claiming anything about the artistic quality of the photos: that is not relevant to my discussion. What I am claiming is that there are visual cues that tell us what is art and what is pornography, and Chiapel's photos contain many cues that code them as art. The photos are black and white, and many of them have a grainy texture. These factors clearly code them as artsy. In contrast, all other photos in the magazine are in color and frequently employ a soft-focus technique in full-body shots. The posing in Chiapel's pictures is done against a totally plain background with only a stool as a prop; the surrounding Penthouse photos are full of fanciful bedroom sets and outdoor scenes. Williams and Geier are nude throughout; typical Penthouse fare makes extensive use of items of clothing such as bras, garter belts, stockings, and high-heeled shoes. There is a genital close-up in the Chiapel pictures, but I don't think this tips the feature as a whole to the pornographic side of things. A normal feature would include not only one or more genital close-ups, but would also include a number of shots that are not close-ups but clearly have genital display as a primary objective. No such shots appear in the Chiapel photos. It is important to understand that the genital close-up that does appear is quite mild since standard fare very frequently includes ones in which the models hold their labia wide apart with their fingers. In addition, it is possible that the genital close-up was not originally framed as such and was blown up and cropped so as to create a close-up. In this sense, Williams may have posed for art which was manipulated into pornography. A common element of f/f[8] features is to picture one model's tongue approaching the other's genitals.[9] No such display is present in the Chiapel pictures.
The Whitman photos conform more closely to standard Penthouse fare, but they are much less significant than the September issue since their existence was not even known until a month after Williams resigned, and they came out almost four months after that. The Whitman photos are in color, and make use of items of clothing and props that are suggestive of S&M. These items include handcuffs and leather adornments with metal fittings such as studs and hoops. At the same time, some aspects of standard fare are missing: there is only a plain background (no set), and there are no genital close-ups.
Returning to the subject of Chiapel's photos, I must say that despite my attempts to demonstrate their atypical nature, the historical fact remains that they were largely understood to be pornography, plain and simple. There are three major aspects of the photos which positively coded them as pornography. The first is simply that they appeared in the context of Penthouse, not something like an exhibit at an art gallery. The second aspect is that they included f/f shots, which are coded as hardcore pornography. For instance, Playboy does not feature such scenes. The third aspect is that they were nude pictures, and the hysteria and phobia surrounding nudity in our culture tends to consider all nude pictures as pornography.
The topic of the meaning of f/f shots in male-oriented pornography is worth returning to because of its importance in the discourse surrounding Williams. Morgan suggests that f/f shots are about lesbianism in the sense that she interprets them as a manifestation of homophobia. In addition, she and two other commentators {Nati, Wash7} suggest that the furor over the pictures was (unnecessarily) heightened by homophobia. Williams certainly felt lesbianism was at issue in her photos since she found it necessary to forcefully deny that she was a lesbian. Her denial was phrased defensively, presenting lesbianism as a immoral, and People loved every minute of it. I doubt it would have made nearly as good a story if Williams (or "Vanessa," as People refers to her) had said, "I'm not a lesbian, but so what if I was?" Unfortunately, this was not the case. People and Williams dealt sexual freedom a grave blow with the appearance of the following quote as a subtitle to the article "Vanessa Fights Back": "I am not a lesbian and I am not a slut, and somehow I am going to make people believe me" {Peop2}. As if this weren't enough, she assures, "I know the pictures look incriminating, but believe me, there was no lesbian activity" {38-9, italics added}.
Personally, I'm doubtful that homophobia was a big part of aversion towards and condemnation of the photos. I say this because I think f/f shots are not interpreted as depicting real lesbianism. They are understood to be a staple of heterosexual male pornography. The genre benefits from the notion of lesbianism as "naughty," but not as "wrong." The models are so firmly framed within the confines of male gaze and fantasy that no lesbianism of the real, threatening kind is present in the photos. One for f/f shots' popularity is that they solve a riddle: how can you suggest that women are engaged in sexual acts while at the same time avoiding any male presence? Avoiding male presence has the advantage of leaving space for the viewer to enter the scene through fantasy. No competition exists. In somewhat crass terms, f/f allows horniness and willingness to be demonstrated without compromising availability. When males are present, the viewer must imagine himself as the male model, which may not be as stimulating for some viewers. It is important to note that a single piece of pornography like a Penthouse issue must provide various pornographic genres (f/f, m/f, genital close-ups) in order to satisfy its readers, who may not be as stimulated by some genres as others.
All this having been said, perhaps homophobia was a big part the hoopla about the photos. Above I have explained why I think f/f shots are not "read" as being about real lesbianism. But one of my main points about the Chiapel photos is that they were atypical fare for Penthouse and pornography in general. In this sense, the lack of pornographic genre cues may have left viewers in a sufficient state of confusion as to "forget" the normal non-threatening meaning of f/f scenes. I have absolutely no textual support for or against this, but it certainly seems possible.
Miss America Pageant Chairman Albert Marks made an intriguing and forceful comment about the photos: "As a man, a father, a grandfather, as a human being, I have never seen anything like these photographs. Ugh. I can't even show them to my wife" {Peop1 80}. What I find intriguing are his invocations of his patriarchal (and then humanistic) credentials, his naïveté about pornography, and the protective role he considers himself to have towards his wife. Are we to assume that his wife asked to see the photos but he wouldn't let her? If so, what is preventing her from going out and buying a copy herself? One wonders exactly what it was that Marks found so offensive about the photos: probably the f/f shots and/or the genital close-up. There was definitely something specifically irksome about these photos since "[t]he Pageant Board of Directors ... [was] going to exonerate Williams until Federal Express delivered copies of the offending photos during the course of their meeting" {Peop1 80}.
Conclusion: Paths Not Taken
The usual constraints of time and space have prevented me from discussing the variety of other ways in which Williams functioned as a site of contention and anxiety about broader social issues. I can't bear to let them go entirely unmentioned, so I will point out a few. A significant challenge to the Miss America Pageant as an institution appeared in the discourse surrounding Williams, and a debate over the relationship of the Pageant to pornography emerged. The large female constituency of the Pageant audience came up as a significant wrench thrown into the works of theories of the Pageant (and beauty) as a simple patriarchal institution. Feminism comes up in many ways. Predictably, Gloria Steinem emerges as a spokesperson, but she is far from the only voice heard. Issues of violence against women, the psychological development of girls, and the general status of women in society come up. William's support of abortion and her pregnancies bring up the topic of birth control, and her marriage to Ramon Hervey, the publicist who advised her to resign her crown, brings up the disturbing possibility of constructing a narrative in which Williams was an out-of-control woman who was subsequently controlled by male influence and the assumption of her "proper" maternal role.
Leaving all these juicy topics aside, I hope that at least this paper provided some interesting insights into the way race and pornography functioned as prominent elements of the discourse surrounding Williams, and I hope that my approach to "reading" pornographic photos provides some food for thought.
Out-takes: Much Ado About Nearly Nothing
Here are some snippets, some funny and some depressing, that weren't precisely relevant to my paper but were too good to leave out.
Some of the items up for auction include a wedding dress worn by Lucille Ball in a film; a baseball autographed by Tom Seaver; a pair of Vanessa Williams's jeans; a weekend at a Colorado resort .... {NYT5}
There was some discussion over whether her [Williams'] dress was tomato colored or Chinese red, but nonetheless it was decided that it blended well with a spray of chrysanthemums that was used as background. {Time1}
[Williams] was turned down by a co-op apartment board in New York as an `inappropriate person.' Director Tommy Tune liked her when she auditioned to go into the musical "My One and Only," but, says Williams, Ira Gershwin's wife, Lee, vetoed her: "She said I'd bring the wrong type of audience into the theater." {News3}
"[Williams] is a slut" said Venus Ramey, who was a Miss America in the forties. {Peop1}
STURGEON BAY, Wis., July 27 -- Thieves who broke into a bookstore here made off with a truck and 168 copies of the Penthouse magazine edition featuring former Miss America Vanessa Williams.... They ... abandoned an unopened safe after moving it out of the store. {Wash8}
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Eloise Pasachoff for her careful reading of this paper and the important suggestions that she made about it. I would like to thank all of my friends for putting up with my constantly talking about Vanessa Williams while I was writing this paper.
Works Cited or Consulted
DeFord, Frank. "Frank DeFord in Defense of Miss America." The Boston Globe. Sep 15 `84. Op-Ed.
Gilliam, Dorothy. "A Sad Lesson." The Washington Post. Jul 26 '84. p. C1.
Holtzworth, Anne S. Miss America--whose ideal?: protest and reaction in the Miss America pageant, 1921-1984. 1984. Honors A.B. Thesis, Harvard University.
Morgan, Robin. "The Vanessa Williams Controversy." Ms. Oct `84. p. 154.
Poussaint, Renee. "What Happens When a Black "First" Fails?" Ms. Feb `85. p. 84.
Riverol, Armando. Live from Atlantic City: the history of the Miss America Pageant before, after, and in spite of television. 1992. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
White, Diane. "Diane White Shattering an Illusion." The Boston Globe. Jul 21 `84. Living Section.
Williams, Patricia J. "On Being the Object of Property." Feminist Theory in Practice and Process. 1989. p. 275-94.
Curr: Current Biography Yearbook. 1984. p. 454-7.
Ebon1: Whitaker, Charles. "A New Live For Vanessa." Ebony. Apr `87. p. 115-8.
Ebon2: Normet, Lynn. "Vanessa Williams Finds Success With `The Right Stuff.'" Ebony. Dec `88. p. 142-6.
Ebon3: Normet, Lynn. "Vanessa Williams: `Success is the Best Revenge.'" Ebony. Apr `90. p. 52-6.
Globe10: Hernandez, Peggy. "News Dealers Reporting Brisk Sales of Magazine." The Boston Globe. Jul 24, `84.
Globe11: Barclay, Dolores. "Williams Can't Recall Releasing Photos." The Boston Globe. Jul 23 `84.
Globe2: Vellante, John P. "Names & Faces." The Boston Globe. Oct 19 `83.
Globe3: Christy, Marian. "Conversations by Marian Christy: No Blandness from this Miss America." The Boston Globe. Feb 26 `84. Living Section.
Globe4: Wade, Robert. "Miss America Asked to Resign." The Boston Globe. Jul 21 `84.
Nati: "There She Goes, Miss America." The Nation. Aug 4 `84. p. 1. Editorial.
News1: McGuigan, Cathleen, with Jennifer Boeth. "Miss America: A Title Lost." Newsweek. Jul 30 `84. p. 85.
News3: Kroll, Jack. "Success is the Best Revenge." Newsweek. Aug 15 `94. p. 65.
NYT1: Horowitz, Joy. "Black Actresses are Still Waiting for Star Roles." The New York Times. May 29 `91. p. C11.
NYT5: Charles, Eleanor. "The Guide." The New York Times. Mar 15 `92. p. 12CN:16. (Connecticut Weekly Desk).
Peop1: Plummer, William (reported by Giovanna Breu, Nancy Jocobsen, Linda Marx, Cable Neuhaus, Richard K. Rein and Leah Rozen). "Haunted by her Past." People Weekly. Aug 6 `84. p. 80-7. Includes sub-article "Vanessa's Story."
Peop2: Darrach, Brad. "Vanessa Fights Back." People Weekly. Sep 10 `84. p. 36-41.
Time1: Jaynes, Gregory. "In New York: The Miss Is a Hit." Time. Oct 17 `83. p. 10-12.
Time2: Cocks, Jay (reported by Ferenbaugh, Dorothy). "There She Goes, Miss America." Time. Aug 6 `84. p. 61.
Wash1: "Personalities." The Washington Post. Aug 25 `84. p. G3.
Wash7: Yates, Elizabeth. "Reputations: A Double Standard." The Washington Post. Jul 28 `84. p. A11.
Wash8: "Bookstore Burglars Take 168 Penthouses." The Washington Post. Jul 28 `84. p. A7.
Webster: Webster's 7th Collegiate Dictionary. 1963.