Summary: <p style="margin: 0px 0px 8px; text-align: justify; font-size: 14px; font-family: Times; color: #323333;">Beauty pageants promote the fantasy of the ideal woman. But for 35 years, one contest in New York City celebrated the everyday working girl.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 8px; text-align: justify; font-size: 14px; font-family: Times; color: #323333;">Each month starting in 1941, a young woman was elected “Miss Subways,” and her face gazed down on transit riders as they rode through the city. Her photo was accompanied by a short bio describing her hopes, dreams and aspirations. The public got to choose the winners – so Miss Subway represented the perfect New York miss. She was also a barometer of changing times.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 8px; text-align: justify; font-size: 14px; font-family: Times; color: #323333;">Miss Subways was one of the the first integrated beauty pageants in America. An African-American Miss Subways was selected in 1948 – more than thirty years before there was a black Miss America. By the 1950s there were Miss Subways who were black, Asian, Jewish, and Hispanic – the faces of New York’s female commuters.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 8px; text-align: justify; font-size: 14px; font-family: Times; color: #323333;">Meet the Miss Subways in this radio story, produced by Samara Freemark.</p>
