[4][failed verification] The group was organized in the fall of 1967 by former TV child star Robin Morgan, Carol Hanisch,[5] Shulamith Firestone,[6] and Pam Allen.

Hanisch said that she got the idea to target the Miss America contest after the group, including Morgan, Kathie Sarachild, Rosalyn Baxandall, Alix Kates Shulman, Patricia Mainardi, Irene Peslikis, and Ellen Willis, watched the film Schmeerguntz, which depicted how beauty standards oppressed women.

She explained that the purpose of the protest was to demonstrate their objections to the pageant's focus on women's bodies over their brains, "on youth rather than maturity, and on commercialism rather than humanity".

[9] In her letter requesting a permit, Morgan named the sponsor of the protest as "Women's Liberation", a "loose coalition of small groups and individuals".

Peggy Dobbins, a performer and activist, created a life-sized Miss America puppet which she displayed on the boardwalk in the guise of a carnival barker auctioning her off.

[9] The press release for the event[14] contained sentiments that resonated well beyond the movement, such as “Miss America is a walking commercial for the pageant's sponsors.

Wind her up and she plugs your product…” and “last year she went to Vietnam to pep-talk our husbands, fathers, sons and boyfriends into dying and killing with a better spirit…"[15] About 200 members of the group New York Radical Women traveled to Atlantic City in cars and chartered buses.

These included mops, pots and pans, copies of Cosmopolitan and Playboy magazines,[7] false eyelashes, high-heeled shoes, curlers, hairspray, makeup, girdles, corsets, and bras;[19][20] items the protesters called "instruments of female torture"[21] and accouterments of what they perceived to be enforced femininity.

"[7] Along with tossing the items into the trash can and distributing literature outside, four protesters including Kathie Sarachild and Carol Hanisch bought tickets and entered the hall.

"[7][24] Outgoing Miss America Snodgrass said that the protesters were diminishing the hard work of thousands of competitors who were attending school and had put a lot of effort into developing their talents.

It stated, "As the bras, girdles, falsies, curlers, and copies of popular women's magazines burned in the Freedom Trash Can, the demonstration reached the pinnacle of ridicule when the participants paraded a small lamb wearing a gold banner worded Miss America."

Make a bonfire of the cruel steels that have lorded it over your thorax and abdomens for so many years and heave a sigh of relief, for your emancipation I assure you, from this moment has begun.

This might lead individuals to believe, as she wrote in her article "Feminism, Miss America, and Media Mythology", that the women were merely trying to be "trendy, and to attract men".

The runway parade is a metaphor of the 4-H Club county fair, where the animals are judged for teeth, hair, grooming, and so forth, and where the best specimen is awarded the blue ribbon.

They criticized the "cheerleader" tour taken by the winner to visit troops in foreign countries as "Miss America as Military Death Mascot".

[42] She wrote that Miss America is a walking commercial for the pageant's sponsors, making her a primary part of "The Consumer Con-Game".

The authors criticized "The Woman as Pop Culture Obsolescent Theme", which they described as the promotion of women who are young, juicy, and malleable, but upon the selection of a new winner each year, are discarded.

The writers accused the competition of encouraging women to be inoffensive, bland, and apolitical, ignoring characteristics like personality, articulateness, intelligence, and commitment.

The pamphlet said the pageant was "Miss America as Dream Equivalent To", positioning itself as the penultimate goal of every little girl, while boys were supposed to grow up and become President of the United States.

[42] Morgan wrote that the pageant attempted thought control, creating the illusion of "Miss America as Big Sister Watching You".

As a student at Maryland State College, she helped organize the Black Awareness Movement with her classmates and staged a sit-in at a local restaurant, which refused to serve African Americans.

[50]The competition, organized by civil rights activist J. Morris Anderson, was held at the Ritz Carlton a few blocks from Convention Hall, where the Miss America pageant took place the same evening.

The Miss Black America protesters had no grievances with the idea of beauty standards, but with the fact that they strongly favored white women.