Despite the schism, Miss America endured, with a reputation as the more demure of the two franchises. “I’m an opera singer, not a pinup,” Betbeze said.Ĭatalina went and started its own contest, Miss U.S.A., scrapping the talent competition and offering cash prizes instead of scholarships. But she won, and, newly crowned, refused to sign a contract that would have required her to tour the country in swimsuits made by Catalina, one of the pageant’s sponsors. She returned to her dressing room to find the words “Hairy sits here,” a reference to her thick eyebrows, scrawled in lipstick on the makeup mirror. In 1950, Yolande Betbeze, a convent-educated coloratura soprano from Mobile, Alabama, entered the Miss America contest and performed an aria from “Rigoletto” as her talent. As annual tournaments of unmarried, childless women in their late teens and twenties, the two events have much in common. To the long-standing annoyance of people involved with the Miss America contest, which bills itself as “first, and foremost, a scholarship program,” the general public often confuses it with Miss U.S.A., which freely admits to being a beauty pageant.
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