66). Morley's wife, Julia (a former beauty pageant winner) joined him in 1970 to help organize the competition to help maintain the contestants' morals and to ensure their modesty was suitably protected ("not invariably with success") (Cavendish, p. 67). Miss World has subsequently attracted television audiences in almost every country in the world and has earned an enormous amount of money for charity (Cavendish, 2001).
During the first few years of the competition, the Miss Great Britain title was a highly prized award, but Cooke suggests that it represented one of the only ways women had at the time to express themselves in a legitimate fashion: "My feeling," she says, is that it was, perversely, a kind of liberation for some women -- a way of making their only assets and their skills (the application of lipstick, the ability to walk gracefully in high heels) work for them" (p. 39). The winner of these early pageants were highly regarded and universally admired; winners got to travel (although under chaperoned conditioned), and were able to attend important civic events. "It was a nice little earner, too. 'Yes, I can open the Leigh Bowling Centre on 10th of January," wrote Gillian Taylor, an attractive blonde winner in 1963. In an effort to counter accusations that the pageant was equivalent to a "female cattle market," the organizers introduced questions and answers of "a high-souled if stilted nature about each girl's ambitions and intellectual achievements" (Cavendish, 2001, p. 65). A review of the judges' scorecards from this era is revealing. A maximum of 20 points was available in each of four categories: 1) daywear, 2) swimwear, 3) evening dress and, 4) the interview (Cooke, 2004).
According to Cooke, in 1981, contestants were asked: "Science fiction, feature films and TV serials are giving an insight into the world of the future. How do you visualize the lifestyle of our descendants in the 21st century?" (p. 40). By the time the event had assumed the dimensions of Miss World though, things had definitely changed. According to Cooke, by the mid-1970s,...
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