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[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello there. Thank you for inviting me into your eardrums. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, and this is episode number 429. My guest today is Dr. Hilary Levey Friedman, who is a Brown University professor and the author of a new book, Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America. I had a chance to read this book, and I was so excited to speak with her about it, partially because the ways in which public concepts of beauty pageants overlap a fair bit with the public conceptions of romance was really intriguing. So we’re going to talk about pageants, history, popular culture, and some surprising elements about Miss America’s history, like the number of former beauty pageant contestants who go into politics and public service. Interesting!
I will have links to all of the books that we talk about, and I will have links as to where you can find Dr. Levey Friedman on the internet because, well, that’s where we all hang out, right? Right.
This episode is brought to you by Hello Fresh, America’s number one meal kit. New sponsor, yay! I know you’ve heard me talk about menu planning and schedule management because of my philosophy that Past Sarah and Present Sarah have to do Future Sarah a favor as often as we can? I am pretty excited to add Hello Fresh to our weekly menu because the recipes are easy, they are pre-portioned, and they add something new to the meal schedule, which everyone in the house appreciates. Hello Fresh offers low-calorie, vegetarian, and kid-friendly recipes. Ninety percent of their ingredients are sourced directly from growers, so everything is fresh and high quality. Plus, their packaging is almost entirely made from recyclable or already recycled components, which I really like that part. So we save money, and we eliminate a trip to the grocery store, plus we get to try new recipes that are easy to follow and delicious, and I love finding new recipes; it’s one of my favorite things. You can go to hellofresh.com/TRASHYBOOKS80 or use the code TRASHYBOOKS80, eight-zero, to get a total of eighty dollars off across five boxes, including free shipping on your first box. That’s hellofresh.com/TRASHYBOOKS80, or use code TRASHYBOOKS80 to get a total of eighty dollars off across five boxes, including free shipping on your first box!
Hello, and thank you to our Patreon community. The Patreon community is comprised of outstanding human beings who make sure that every episode is accessible to everyone by making sure that every episode has a transcript, so thank you to the Patreon community for making the transcripts possible, and hello to garlicknitter for compiling this one and every other transcript. [Hello! – gk] If you would like to join our Patreon community, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches!
As always, I will have an absolutely dreadful joke for you in the outro, because that’s how I do things. I’m terrible, and I know you love to share the bad jokes with the people around you, so I’m really happy to provide this service for you! So make sure you tune in after the episode for a terrible joke!
And I recently had a chance to look at some of the reviews you have left for the podcast? Thank you! Holy cow! I am so honored to keep you company, and the five-star reviews that you have left where you listen to podcasts, like iTunes or Apple Podcasts or whatever they’re calling it right now, and Stitcher and other places, I’m – thank you. I’m completely blown away. Thank you so much for the taking the time to do that.
But for now, let’s do this podcast. On with my interview with Dr. Hilary Levey Friedman about Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America.
[music]
Dr. Hilary Levey Friedman: My name is Hilary Levey Friedman. I’m a sociologist, and I teach at Brown University, and I just wrote a book called Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America.
Sarah: First of all, your book was so interesting, and I have been thinking about it since I finished reading it. I have so many questions, because the book itself is sort of chilling at this really interesting intersection where I also like to hang out, between feminism and standards for women, specifically in your, in this case, beauty standards, which, while I was writing this question I was like, oh! Feminist waves versus permanent waves! Waves of feminism versus waves of hair! And then I had a really good time amusing myself. But it also looks at how ambition is framed and how who has ambition and what they look like while they have it is such an important consideration for women. And you also have to hang out in that intersection, because you’re fluent in the pageant world, and yet you’re critical of it from a feminist and sociological perspective. Is that really difficult position to maintain? Is it difficult to hang out there?
Dr. Levey Friedman: Well, just like I’ve always been both an insider and an outsider in the pageant world and in –
Sarah: Right, yes.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – my life, I feel like I just often hang out in these spaces where it’s like, I belo-, kind of belong there, I kind of belong there, but I don’t fully belong anywhere? So I’ve sort of embraced that and just said, if, you know, if you don’t like me because I like this feminine thing or you don’t like me because of this, like, you’re just not my people. But I will say that it’s interesting because I hang out in that sort of liminal, in-between space –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – I think often, more often I feel called upon to defend some aspect of beauty pageants because a perspective hasn’t been put out there before, and it might not be my intention to defend, but I think – or be an apologist or something – but I think sometimes it might come across that way? But what I –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – really want to do – and I love that you said that you’d been thinking about it, because in my work I always want people to think about how some new information or knowledge or whatever it is or new perspective makes them think about their lives in a different way. So I’m not trying to, like, convince anyone of anything. I’m really trying to make you think, so that made me very happy.
Sarah: Oh! I’m very pleased! I, I nodded a lot while reading this book, and I suspect anyone listening to our conversation will understand this immediately, because I hang out in that weird liminal space where I’m fluent in romance fiction, I’m a reviewer of it, so – and I’m also an author of it, but primarily a reviewer of it – and I am frequently found in positions where I have to explain and defend the genre to those who have a very limited and a very inaccurate or outdated understanding of it, while also criticizing the things that it does that drive me up a wall. So it’s a, it’s, it’s a tricky space to be in, and the, one of the things that resonated me about the book was that it’s really hard to look at something where you can see both sides of it; you know what I mean?
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes, I do know!
[Laughter]
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes, no. I mean, I think this position of, well, I’m trying to explain something that you might not fully understand or have all the information on; that makes it really complicated as well, so it’s more like, as you said, the genre’s changed, or things have changed, or people have an outdated notion, and so, you know, the onus is then on me to explain it, so that’s –
Sarah: Yes.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes! [Laughs]
Sarah: Now for me, what I often deal with are very stereotypical markers of romance: things like bodice rippers or Fabio. If you bring up Fabio, I have immediate understanding of when and where you got your information about romance. Are there markers like that for Miss America and for beauty pageants? Is it, is it like, okay, JonBenét Ramsey and that’s your major, that’s your major piece of understanding? Or are there other markers that you’re like, oh, that thing. Okay. That’s where you’re getting your information.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Well, for sure the world peace thing, when we’re talking about Miss pageants like Miss America or Miss USA, that’s, that’s a very big one.
Sarah: [Laughs] Of course!
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yeah. And then, like –
Sarah: World peace!
Dr. Levey Friedman: World peace is a big one, and then sort of the cattiness of women, that comes up a lot. Like, ooh, they must, you know, they must hate each other; that kind of thing? And for me, JonBenét Ramsey, yes, for child beauty pageants, although that probably dates us at a particular time that we really remember JonBenét, ‘cause these days a lot of people would say Toddlers & Tiaras.
Sarah: Oh, for sure! And the, the, the, your book does a really interesting job of tracing the beauty pageants for children through several major periods of history, but also how Toddlers & Tiaras came out of that particular news event.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes. I mean, on the one hand, child beauty pageants and, they’re called Miss pageants for, like, the older women? They seem separate, but really they’ve been intertwined, and I just see many more similarities between Toddlers & Tiaras and something like RuPaul’s Drag Race, because basically, this is all drag, right? Or as RuPaul says –
Sarah: Mm-hmm!
Dr. Levey Friedman: “We’re born naked, and the rest is drag,” so obviously, like, if you’re competing at Miss America or Miss USA or whatever it is, that’s some form of drag too. But you, like, really, really see, like, I’m going to dress up this, in this very, very ultrafeminine way, both with the little girls and with drag queens.
Sarah: Oh, for sure. There were a pair of sociologists who did an in-depth study of the romance novel community a few years ago, Joanna Gregson and Jen Lois, who are at universities out west. They study single-gender communities. They did a study of teen moms who are homeschooling, and then they did a study of romance writers and the romance community. And one of the things that I found so interesting about their research, which I’m sure you’ve encountered as well, is that single-gender communities tend to exhibit hypertrophied examples of the markers of that gender, so you have this incredibly outlandish portrayal of what is considered a feminine attribute. And I didn’t think of it until they pointed it out to me, but romance conventions are hella pageants. Like –
Dr. Levey Friedman: [Laughs]
Sarah: – if I’m going to a romance pa-, if I’m going to a romance convention, it’s like plumage! I have to start thinking about hair and eyebrows and shoes and clothing, and all of these women who are writers, who spend a lot of time in yoga pants, we are all very dressed up for one another. It’s a pageant! It’s – and now that you’ve pointed it out, so many things are drag in pageants. Do you, like, look at different things in your life and be like, yep, pageant; yep, pageant; yep, uh-huh, mm-hmm, yep, yep?
Dr. Levey Friedman: Oh, a hundred percent.
[Laughter]
Dr. Levey Friedman: A hundred percent, and The Bachelorette recently came back, but to me, The Bachelor, that is really the new Miss America. Like, even –
Sarah: That is such a pageant! You’re so right about that!
Dr. Levey Friedman: It’s such a pageant. I mean, in the early rounds, whatever you want to call it, when all the women are there fighting for just the one man, the Bachelor, like, almost every episode they appear in bikinis in some way. There’s, like, a pool party or something else. Then –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – then they have to do some sort of kind of talent thing, whether that’s an obstacle course or coming up with a song or a comedy routine. And then, of course, the rose ceremony. I mean, it’s, like, literally a beauty pageant! They’re wearing –
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – evening gowns. I mean, Chris Harrison! He used to host Miss America, so – [laughs] – we really have it there.
Sarah: It really is, and it’s so interesting when you talked about how the ratings for The Bachelor are higher than the ratings for Miss America on television now. It’s like we, we like our pageants dressed up as something else.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Exactly! So it’s like, you can say, okay, the individual ratings for Miss America or Miss USA have gone down, and I can tell you all kinds of reasons for that, but it’s not that there’s not the cultural appetite for something like that, because there is.
Sarah: Oh no!
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yeah.
Sarah: Oh no. One of the things I really liked is the idea, like I said, that I exist in the same space that you do in a, in a different, different genre, so to speak, where here’s this thing: is it feminist and subversive; or is it upholding patriarchal, misogynist standards; or is it both? And do you meander back and forth between the yes, it’s this and yes, it’s this a lot?
Dr. Levey Friedman: Well, that’s probably how I view most things? I’m always like –
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Levey Friedman: – for everything? But I will say, because beauty pageants have this long history, I’m far more comfortable saying at, like, in a historical time that we’ve really moved past, okay, like, it was that then, and it’s this now. So for example –
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – Miss America started in 1921 by a group of male businessmen. It was all men who came up with it, and the, their goal was to use women’s bodies to attract more tourists so their businesses would make more money for longer. So, like, that seems pretty cut-and-dried to me. You know, that, okay, we got it: you were using women’s bodies. And then it transformed, and so today, I mean, again, I think it depends on where we are in the feminist movement? But today I’m like, well, you might disagree with what an individual chooses to do, but isn’t that sort of what we’ve been fighting for, that people can choose to do what they want to do and we say, okay, you go do your thing, even if it’s not my choice?
Sarah: And when you, when you wrote that Miss America is possibly the best example of the difficult, complicated nature of American womanhood, when, when you speak about the book, is that something you talk a lot about?
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes, because, you know, we don’t have one – thank goodness! – we don’t have one monolithic version of what American womanhood should be or what the American woman should look like, and in the past there were far fewer choices and something like Miss America was one of them! We think about “There she is, your ideal.” So –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – I love that that has changed, but the struggle that Miss America in particular has had to define itself, to be relevant, to kind of be one with the times, for lack of –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – better word, you know, to me that really shows that we still just don’t, we haven’t figured out what the American woman should do. I mean, we see that right now; we’ve seen it recently with the SCOTUS hearings and –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – you know, should, what does it mean that the nominee has seven children, and what does it mean that someone asked her who does the laundry and you’d never ask a man that? Like, we’re still struggling with that. Do we talk about how women look? All of those things, and I think the messages we send to young girls today are, okay, compete in the classroom, be really successful, but do it with a smile. You know, sweat on the sports field, but also look good after. And so it’s okay that we have those dualities, but we need to recognize them in order to really address them.
Sarah: I appreciated the number of people who you interviewed who made variations of the point that you can criticize the person for participating in something that you find demeaning or degrading, but it’s much more effective to examine the standards and structures that created that opportunity for them.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes, and I think this was a lesson that second-wave feminism had to learn the hard way? So at this sort of seminal 1968 protest outside of the Miss America pageant, there was –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – a lot of blowback because it felt like the women were criticizing the women. And some of you may have watched Mrs. America, the FX series, which obviously has some pageant undertones, but you can see the way in which that backlash helped torpedo the ERA, for example, and so again, it’s not just like, oh, it’s helpful for personal interactions, but I think it’s helpful, helpful for systemic change when we think about looking at the institutions that produce something rather than criticizing the women who have made the choice to participate.
Sarah: Right. And that there are often two very effective ways to make change: to go into the structure from the inside and start making changes that might not be visible or, you know, storm the castle from the outside.
[Crosstalk]
Sarah: Or just blow it up, right?
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yeah. Yes.
Sarah: This is sort of an unfair question, but I am, I am curious, because I’m sure you’ve been asked this: do you think that Miss America, the pageant, is still relevant?
Dr. Levey Friedman: I think it’s relevant for some people.
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Levey Friedman: It’s not relevant to everyone?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: In the same way that, like, lacrosse isn’t relevant to me. [Laughs] Like, I didn’t –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Levey Friedman: That wasn’t an effective way for me to get into college or, you know, to stay physically fit. So I think it’s, it used to held up as something that was perhaps one of the only paths for women to advance, whether that was an entertainment career or to get college scholarships or what have you, but now there’s just so many different options. You know, when I think about it, my mother was Miss America 1970; two years later we passed Title IX, you know, which just completely changes the landscape of what’s possible for women and girls, especially in an educational setting. So, so much has changed, and I just, I’m not sure anything will ever have that much cultural power again. Maybe besides the NFL, but that’s a whole other discussion.
Sarah: That’s an entire, yeah, that’s a, whoo! That’s a whole other language. What does your mom think of your book?
Dr. Levey Friedman: [Laughs] So she has not stayed as involved with the Miss America pageant as many other former Miss Americas have, and so she very much saw it as, that was something I did in my life, and then I moved on to other things. So on –
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – the one hand she was, like, super confused that I got really into this.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Levey Friedman: Like, I’ve been to more Miss America pageants than she has, for sure. But on the other hand, you know, I think it’s validating to her. We’re very, very different –
Sarah: Mm-hmm?
Dr. Levey Friedman: – and if you read the book you’ll see that I write about, you know, she was the beauty and I was the brains, and I thought those things were mutually exclusive growing up? So I think it’s validated in some sense, like, oh, this was a really big deal, and it was an accomplishment, and it’s not something you should be embarrassed about, and, like, your brainy daughter, like, thinks it’s cool, so overall, like, I’m sure she’s just like, I’m glad that that’s done and you’re not as stressed out as you were when you were writing it.
[Laughter]
Dr. Levey Friedman: At the end of the day.
Sarah: All right, I have – right. Although, you know, you may have been to more Miss America pageants, but I have to wonder if being in the pageant counts for at least like ten attendances.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Oh, probably.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Levey Friedman: You’re right; you’re right. And actually being Miss America, and then having to go to all those other pageants when you are Miss America, so you’re right.
Sarah: Yeah, it’s a full-time job being Miss America.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Well, so that’s the interesting thing, too, is that people come in once a year, right, and watch a two- to three-hour TV special, which also just really doesn’t work in today’s media landscape, but –
Sarah: No.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – you know, if you win, it is a job, and you are doing that 364, the next 364, maybe more, days, and it is a lot of travel, and there are a lot of expectations, and I think it’s particularly challenging because Miss America is a title that people recognize, but they don’t necessarily even know the name of the person who has that title for the given year. So I think that’s particularly challenging, and the first time I taught this class at Brown called “Beauty Pageants in American Society” in the fall of 2015, somewhat crazily, one of my students, who had done pageants before, but she went to compete back home in, in Miss North Dakota, and I went to watch her, and she was first runner-up, and the next year she won Miss North Dakota, and then I was in the audience when she was crowned Miss America 2018, and so we had –
Sarah: That is unreal.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes, unreal, and that’s part of the reason I was like, okay, I have to do this book. The universe is telling me like, this is your story that you have to tell, and all these things, like, are coming together, so you must do this, Hilary. So, but, you know, she had a really challenging year because there were a lot of changes within the Miss America organization and in the country. It was the #MeToo movement that really impacted Miss America: the man who had been leading the pageant resigned because of emails that had been leaked where he fat-shamed and slut-shamed former winners.
Sarah: Yeah. Ugh!
Dr. Levey Friedman: It led to this whole, Gretchen Carlson came in, and she had all these, you know, she has all sorts of interesting links to what’s going on right now, and she eliminated the swimsuit competition. So she had, like, a really, really crazy year, but she’s gone on – I made her promise the day after she won that she would still go to law school, which was her goal, ‘cause I know how many Miss Americas don’t go back and do what they said they were going to do, and she is in her second year at Harvard Law School right now, so I’m very proud of her.
Sarah: When you talked about how it’s like a full-time job and the minute you win you have a full year of travel and appearances, what are some of the things that Miss America is expected to do? Because unless she, she shows up locally, like you said, I would see the pageant, but I would not see Miss America on, like, a day-to-day basis.
Dr. Levey Friedman: So it’s interesting because, starting in the late 1980s, kind of evolved that it, they developed what was called the platform issue. It’s now called the Social Impact Initiative, but it’s –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – some cause that a contestant feels really strongly about or has an interest in and can engage on. So the current Miss America, her talent was doing a science experiment on stage, because she’s pursuing her doctorate in pharmacology, so she’s going to be a pharmacist, and it’s so funny, I just heard her on the radio. I live in Rhode Island. I don’t even think she’s anywhere nearby, but it’s, like, opiate awareness time and overdose awareness and what people should do, and so she had a spot on the radio. So it kind of depends on what someone’s focus is and what they’re –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – main interest is? But otherwise, yeah, you’re, like, going to chicken dinners. [Laughs] You’re, like, going to conventions. Maybe you’re going to speak at some, like, agricultural conference in Iowa. It’s not super glamorous? It’s definitely, you know, out there and speaking and trying to get the mission of Miss America out there or, like, be there for photo ops, honestly.
Sarah: So it’s partly that you’re representing the Miss America organization and partly, this is your year to advance the thing that you personally have worked on as well.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Well, and I think it should be that, right. Like, how are you –
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – going to use this to, like, impact the trajectory of your life, because guess what, you’re going to crown another Miss America, and the second that’s done, like, you’re old news.
Sarah: Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s like –
Dr. Levey Friedman: Which is really hard for a twenty-two-, twenty-three-, twenty-four-year-old.
Sarah: Oh, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s really hard to see the effects of that, of a spotlight like that, one that, one that is so tenacious just being like, okay, we’re done, thanks, bye!
Dr. Levey Friedman: Mm-hmm!
Sarah: And there’s nowhere to go after Miss America except to do the things that you said you were going to do initially.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Correct.
Sarah: Of course.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yeah, and I think, you know, going back to when you asked me what my mom thinks, I mean, I often reflect in relation to her, like, what happens when the biggest thing you’ll ever do in your life happens when you’re twenty-one? And –
Sarah: Oh, that’s a hard question.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yeah! Like, that’s really challenging. And I don’t think that’s true for all the Miss Americas, but it has certainly been true for many, and, I mean, honestly, that was true for my mom, I think. She decided she was going to start a family and go back to Michigan. All those things, she wanted a big family, and she only got stuck with me, so –
[Laughter]
Dr. Levey Friedman: – things did not quite work out how she thought they would, unfortunately.
Sarah: I was also really intrigued by the fact that so many Miss Americas and former pageant title-holders of all of the different pageants often go into politics, and I was absolutely smacked between the eyes like, oh, of course! When Heather French Henry talked about realizing that as a former Miss America, she had better media training than any of the politicians that she was working with, and she was more prepared for media scrutiny and having to spontaneously deliver a, you know, sound-bite-, sound-bite-sized nugget of what it was she was trying to work on, that she had that experience, and people that she was working with who were career politicians did not. Like that, of course, yes, that makes total sense, and then the minute I read it I was like, oh! Well, of course! Geeze! Do you think more pageant alumni will pursue public office?
Dr. Levey Friedman: That’s a prediction I feel very comfortable making, and the answer is yes, and it’s already happening. So, especially since 2016, the number –
Sarah: Oh yeah!
Dr. Levey Friedman: – Americas who ran for office tripled. That’s people who actually won Miss America. So Heather French Henry was a Democratic nominee for the Kentucky Secretary of State race in 2019, and she just barely lost. She would have been the first Miss America elected to public office. The number of state winners has really, really exploded, both who’ve been elected and who are running for office. I love this fact: Nevada is the first state legislature that had a, had, still has, but had a majority of women in the chamber, and the majority leader was a woman who was Miss Nevada and I think third runner-up at Miss America. And right now in Hawaii, like, a former Miss Hawaii is an incumbent as a Republican in their house, and then there’s a woman, also former Miss Hawaii, who is running for office as a Democrat. So I think it even shows there is a spectrum of political views, and absolutely, like, if you are a person who loves civic life, who wants a title as a way to amplify your platform or a cause that you care about, you’re comfortable being in public, you’re comfortable speaking? Wow, there are a lot of similarities between –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Levey Friedman: – pageant queens and politicians.
Sarah: Oh yeah. And the – I mean, one thing I have learned doing media interviews over the course of my work with my website is that it is a skill to be able to think quickly and shape a question the way you want it to go, especially when the question is really far afield from what you thought you were going to be talking about. Like, that’s a, that’s, that’s hard. That’s really hard mental gymnastics to perform with a smile, looking calm, and looking, you know, like you, you’re, you’re in control and you’re not flustered.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Listen, we only have to watch the presidential debates, the recent ones –
Sarah: Oh geeze.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – to know that, yeah, that’s true, but it’s, it’s interesting, because a few years ago John Oliver did about a fifteen-minute segment on Miss America, ‘cause he got really caught up on this notion that Miss America’s the largest provider of scholarships to women, and he goes through this whole thing, and he’s like, wow, they really are, but, like, that’s kind of messed up, but then he shows, like, the final answers that they give to these questions. It’s like, what would you do to solve ISIS? How do you combat climate change? And he’s like, she just gave a better answer in twenty seconds than, like, you know, people in the White House can give, and so that is like, it is really true, and to be able to deal with that stress, that pressure cooker, and it’s why many of them – I found this extremely interesting from the feminist perspective – when they cut swimsuit, many former contestants were like, listen, I learned by doing that, by walking onstage in a bikini and high heels in front of millions of people, that I can literally do anything.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Levey Friedman: And embracing it and being like, yeah, we think that this should stay? So that was really, really interesting to me. Look at, do you see how I just turned that question? [Laughs]
Sarah: Yeah! Yeah! It, it is a skill! It’s a, it’s a really difficult skill, and one thing I’ve noticed as I’m raising two, two boys is that they encounter self-consciousness in a different way than I did growing up identifying as female, and I was much, I was taught to be much more conscious of myself at an earlier age, and that self-consciousness, it can be a positive and can be a negative, but it’s, it’s a skill set to be able to walk through any situation with confidence and know that you can talk your way through it.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Agreed. I’m raising –
Sarah: Knowing that you’re being judged too, right? Oy!
Dr. Levey Friedman: Right. I’m raising two boys too. I do joke that if only – ‘cause I see it – I’m like, if only I had the confidence of a white man. It’s –
Sarah: Oh!
Dr. Levey Friedman: – very, very different, but, as you’re saying, that ability – and I think, I saw my mom get, I know she got this from beauty pageants: the ability to sort of get to know someone, to relate to people. Those are, yes, sort of the EQ that people talk about? For sure –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – you can get that from pageants, and maybe if you’re, like, so over-confident, like my kids, you’re not, like, getting to that different emotional level with people.
Sarah: [Laughs] Because part of the, the, the pageant question is that they have to make some kind of connection with the judge; they have to be a certain level of warm and conscious –
Dr. Levey Friedman: Approachable, approachable.
Sarah: Yes! And, yeah, and they have to be able to, to communicate that they’re not only talking to the camera, if it’s being televised, but they’re talking to the person in front of them, and that making that person feel heard and seen while they’re also being judged themselves, and ooh! Just a little pressure.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yeah. I mean, the eye contact you have to learn to make and sustain, that welcoming sort of persona, again, it’s what people talk about with Vice President Biden a lot, right? So it’s certainly a fertile training ground if you want a life of public service.
Sarah: Yeah. Now one of the reasons I also was deeply interested in the exploration of regional pageants is that I grew up in Pittsburgh, and then I went to a women’s college in South Carolina, which was culturally a little different from where I grew up –
Dr. Levey Friedman: [Laughs]
Sarah: – and that was the first time I was, ever experienced beauty pageant culture. I texted a friend of mine from college who I’m still close to, and I was like – she lives in South Carolina – and I’m like, how many beauty pageants can you name off the top of your head? And she’s like, listen, I’m busy? I don’t have that kind of time, but at least six million of them. And I, in my freshman dorm, I used to joke, okay, I live with the current Miss Georgia Peach, Miss Peach Blossom, Miss Magnolia, Miss Grits – which was not quite a beauty pageant, ‘cause I believe you had to roll around in a pit of grits and then, like, get weighed, how much grits stuck to you, if I’m remembering correctly – and they constantly looked perfect. Like, they would get up and go to class at a women’s college with hair and makeup done, and I would, I would roll into class looking not that way, and it was a culture that absolutely baffled me, and I will say that in my younger age I was much more judgmental than I, than I would be now, you know, ‘cause I’m older and wiser and I’ve grown up a bit? But I was very judgmental, like, who are you dressing up for? What, who, who is seeing you? There’s like ten of us! It was a very small college.
Are regional pageants as much of a, a tradition now, or is their, is their membership and their interest declining? ‘Cause I know they exist, but I don’t know anything about their enrollment numbers.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yeah, no, that’s a great question, and even in our conversation, right, we’ve talked so much about Miss America and Miss USA, but the real heart of pageants, this beauty pageant community, are these local pageants, are these –
Sarah: Oh yeah!
Dr. Levey Friedman: – pageants, and it’s like, if you think about it, have you, if you’ve ever seen the movie Drop Dead Gorgeous, it’s kind of a cult classic, but it’s a small, it’s set in a small town in Minnesota, and Denise Richards plays the girl who’s expected to win, and Kirsten Dunst comes in – if you haven’t seen it, it’s a great movie. But I think that sort of desperation and focus that people have, like this is the most important thing for me to achieve in my small town –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – in my region, is super powerful and potent and sort of in some ways transcends the national pageants, because that’s how people, again, really develop that civic identity and connection and perhaps their first exposure to female competition. I mean, to circle back to something that we were talking about before, you know, when you say the women got ready, and it was only for other women, it was only to –
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Levey Friedman: – I mean, that is one of the misconceptions about beauty pageants is that it’s like –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – men around, like, ogling the women, because it’s just really not true. Like, if you go to a child beauty pageant in particular, it’s, like, almost entirely a female space, plus some gay men, and that’s true for the Miss pageants as well, and for Miss USA – they’re having a Miss USA pageant in November 2020 in person, and it will be on TV or broadcast on your computer if you don’t get the station – they just released the judges, and the judges are all women! So it’s not something – obviously, men can look at the pictures and think about whatever they want to think about, but this really is, like, a same-sex community.
Sarah: Oh yeah. It’s like romance. There are, there are men there, but it’s not, it’s, it’s a minority in a lot of ways.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes. I mean, and even I was surprised, because I did an analysis of these historical program books going back to the 1970s, and there’s slightly more women who judged than men, even though we always talk about, oh, men are judging women, and, like, even then it wasn’t quite true, and now we have these all-female panels, so I, that is a really interesting change to me.
Sarah: Yes. My, my women’s college that I went to had a beauty pageant. There was a Miss Columbia College, and it was canceled for a couple of years, and I was looking around on the website for something, and I realized that they had, they had brought it back, and it was going to happen in March until COVID shut everything down, and I was like, wow! I had no idea the pageant was coming back! And I had to cover it for the newspaper. Again, I’m not particularly proud of my past self’s coverage of that event, ‘cause I did not get it. I did not understand. But now, as I’m older and I understand how powerful and how beneficial this experience is, especially after writing this book, I can sort of see, oh, yeah, okay, this is not a thing I want to do, but I get it. I do get it.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yeah, I mean, I think that way – look, there are serious problems with beauty pageants. I don’t want to sugar coat it. I think the expectations that your body should look a particular way can be super damaging. I think –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – the focus, especially in the child pageants, with the emphasis on how you look and you’re only beautiful when you’re all done up, and you get all the attention when you’re all done up, yeah. Like, that is not very helpful. By the same token, like, you can say, wow, why are you putting your nine-year-old in gymnastics or something? Which I think of as a very girly activity many times – you know, the rhine-, the rhinestones all over the leotards, the hair bows, the makeup. And so I think all of these things – and we know gymnastics has a lot of problems – so all of these things can have problems, but it still, going back to what we said before, might be useful for a particular individual. But I don’t want to shy away from the fact that it is complicated – [laughs] –
Sarah: Yes. And Miss America in particular, as you talk about, has a racist and ableist history that on many levels is still being undone and addressed.
Dr. Levey Friedman: A hundred percent! I mean, we’ve, we still haven’t had a Black Miss America win with natural hair, for example. There, when there was the last previous Black, Black Miss America before the current science Miss America that I mentioned, when she gave up her title she wore her hair natural, but she didn’t when she won.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: We’ve never had a Miss America with a mobility issue. You know, for, and even apart from that, we’ve never had a Miss America who was out at the time that she competed? There has been a, a Miss America who came out recently when she married another woman. So those are major issues, and it promotes a particular vision of American womanhood –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – that is not just being white and able-bodied and straight, but also there’s a, a big Christian undertone as well, so.
Sarah: Oh, you don’t say! Whoo!
Dr. Levey Friedman: [Laughs]
Sarah: Just a bit!
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yeah, I think there’ve only been two Miss Americas who were not Christian. One was a Jewish Miss America in the 1940s: Bess Myerson, who was a super cool lady – character, I should say – and there was a more recent Miss America, Nina Davuluri, who is not Christian, but it’s, there’s a big, big, big focus on Christianity and prayer if you are around pageants.
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Now, what’s interesting, though, to me is that, you know, you mentioned regional pageants. There are these niche pageants for particular communities that have emerged. I mean, Miss Black America started in 1968 as a positive protest to say Black is Beautiful. There are –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – a lot of pageants that focus on Native women, and it’s a way to try to preserve the language and food customs and all of those things. So this is also what I mean, that it’s way more complicated than just the big pageants you might hear about.
Sarah: Right, and that these pageants within different communities are still very active!
Dr. Levey Friedman: Very active and, and again, people desperately want to win.
Sarah: How much does the crown part play into pageantry? ‘Cause one of the things I thought was so interesting about having this pageant culture in all of these different formations in the US is that we don’t have a royalty, but, wow, people like wearing a crown. I mean, I will confess, I own a tiara; it’s in the closet somewhere. I wore it at a conference because romance, tiara, that’s how it is. But, like, how much does the crown play into it?
Dr. Levey Friedman: Certainly for little girls, it’s really, really big.
Sarah: Mm-hmm!
Dr. Levey Friedman: Same way I think of, like, the participation trophies that kids get for doing soccer or whatever. They’re these, like, gold, gaudy things that you, that cost very little, and you’re essentially paying a bunch of money for? It’s kind of the same thing with the crowns, but, you know, we’ve had this rise of princess culture more generally? So the Disney princesses encapsulate that, but there is definitely something going on with the fact that we don’t have royalty in the US, and when Miss America started and was televised, there was the sense like, okay, we have the President of the United States, and we have Miss America and –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – there’s sort of a coronation and, you know, she didn’t just get the crown; she got the scepter, she got a robe, so there are definite, definitely elements of the royalty. I don’t know how that’s changed with Meghan Markle and all of that now, but –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yeah. [Laughs]
Sarah: It’s definitely a thing.
Dr. Levey Friedman: It’s definitely a thing, and for me, I’ve actually never been into crowns, partly because I think, oh, that’s my mom’s thing, so I’m not going to wear a crown? But, I mean, even my boys actually, when the crowns come out, if I’m having a watch party or something, like, they love putting the crowns on ‘cause they love the colors and the, you know, rhinestones –
Sarah: Yeah!
Dr. Levey Friedman: – and the, yeah.
Sarah: It’s fun! It’s like a dress up!
Dr. Levey Friedman: Sparkle. Sparkle is fun.
Sarah: Yeah! Now, I find your course at Brown so interesting, especially when the, when you talk about how your students, when you start looking at the child pageants, were really critical of anything that was perceived as slut-shaming and that they were more interested in criticizing the structure that leads to beauty pageants, not the pageants themselves or the people that participate in them. Is that still true among your students when you are teaching?
Dr. Levey Friedman: Well, I do have to say that when that happened it was pre the 2016 presidential election.
Sarah: Oh!
Dr. Levey Friedman: So I do think it has changed a little bit because these issues have become so much more pronounced in our current environment –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – around women’s bodies and sexual harassment and assault. So, you know, it’s still absolutely not an invitation, no matter how you’re dressed, for anyone to assault a woman in any way, shape, or form, but I think that was a big focus of these students the first time I taught this in 2015, but Tru-, you know, the Trump infamous Inside Edition tape and all of that obviously had a cataclysmic effect for many people. However, you know, they still are very much like, okay, it might not be what I do. They’re, I mean, I just think the younger generation – ‘cause now basically they’re a generation behind me – they’re just much more accepting of everything, right? Like –
Sarah: Yeah, for sure.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – what you do is not hurting me, so whatever! Go do what you want to do. So I, I think that has been very interesting for me to see.
Sarah: When you teach this course, does it have a – I can imagine students really want to sign up and take this course, ‘cause it’s such an interesting way to look at history and femininity and culture. Is it, is it like a, a class that students really want to take?
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes. [Laughs]
Sarah: Awesome!
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes. I, yeah, there’s always a waiting list, and students writing me paragraphs explaining why they really need a spot in this class and all of that, so yes. [Laughs] It’s –
Sarah: That’s awesome!
Dr. Levey Friedman: – it’s very popular.
Sarah: Now, when we were emailing, you mentioned that Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance was one of the reasons why you became a cultural sociologist. When did you read this book? That’s so interesting!
Dr. Levey Friedman: I read it in college I think my junior year, when I did a seminar about the sociology of culture, and part of what appealed to me so much was this taking something seriously that other people dismiss as frivolous.
Sarah: Ohhh, yeah!
Dr. Levey Friedman: And we –
Sarah: For sure!
Dr. Levey Friedman: – and we often do that for women’s stuff, right? So that really appealed to me, and I just loved this notion of – well, first of all, I hate academic writing that’s, like, so dense no one can read it or understand it –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – or appreciate it, and so I, I always resonated most with books that somehow spoke to something in my life and made me see it in a new way for me to go, oh my gosh, why didn’t I think of that before? And so I had a bit of that with the, with Reading the Romance.
Sarah: That’s very cool. Now, have you read any romance fiction? Totally okay if you haven’t; not a big deal.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yeah! No, I have. Not the Fabio ones.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Dr. Levey Friedman: What, no – I’ll, I’m interested if you would think – I mean, I think of this as romance: like, what is it, Hazel and someone’s guide to dating? I read –
Sarah: Oh, Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating!
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes –
Sarah: Christina Lauren.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes –
Sarah: For sure!
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yeah. That –
Sarah: Absolutely!
Dr. Levey Friedman: I mean, when I, I was like, this is very, very steamy at parts, and I was like –
Sarah: Oh –
Dr. Levey Friedman: – this is romance.
Sarah: Oh yeah, for sure.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes. [Laughs] So yes.
Sarah: Fits all the markers.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes. And then The Love Quotient, I think? Is that what it’s called?
Sarah: The Kiss Quotient. Helen Hoang?
Dr. Levey Friedman: The Kiss Quotient, thank you, thank you. Yes.
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes. So I definitely read – I mean, I’m a cultural omnivore, and I read pretty much anything and everything, although I’m not a big science fiction person. But beyond that –
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – I’ll read anything that’s good.
Sarah: Awesome! Now, is, I don’t know the answer to this, but perhaps you do – is there going to be a Miss America this year?
Dr. Levey Friedman: There is not going to be a Miss America this year. They – well, first of all, the way Miss America gets their contestants is usually in the spring and summer at state pageants –
Sarah: Right!
Dr. Levey Friedman: So that just, there, there, like, aren’t – [laughs] – really –
Sarah: Yeah, there is no pageant.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – queens; there are no contestants. A few states did have them; like, Montana had a pageant and, like, unmasked pageant, which got a lot of blowback, a few months ago.
Sarah: Ugh-ugh-ugh!
Dr. Levey Friedman: So that’s why in, in just a few weeks, on November 9th, Miss USA is happening in Memphis, Tennessee, and they’ve made a lot of changes to make that possible, and so that will be very interesting to see how that is pulled off, and hopefully no one gets sick; I mean, obviously. But the other thing about Miss America and why Here She Is came out when it did is that this was supposed to be marking the hundredth anniversary of Miss America.
Sarah: Right.
Dr. Levey Friedman: So, you know, it was meant to be a big thing, and all these former Miss Americas would come back, some of whom, you know, are really in high-risk categories, so I think there was just no way to have it in 2020, and I mean, hopefully we’ll, there’ll be one in 2021, but who knows?
Sarah: That makes it tricky for eligibility and, and who, who can compete, ‘cause, I mean, it –
Dr. Levey Friedman: Yes.
Sarah: – as you’ve, as, as we’ve talked about, and as you talk about in your book, it’s a lot of work to get there.
Dr. Levey Friedman: And there are age restrictions, so –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – already there’s been talk of, like, will they, you know, say you can be twenty-six now? All of those things. I mean, but of course this is not just unique to Miss America. You think about the Olympics and –
Sarah: Yeah.
Dr. Levey Friedman: – people were training to peak for the summer, and what, will people who were too young to compete, let’s say in gymnastics again this past year, but are now old enough next summer, are they going to be allowed in? So obviously it’s upended everybody’s lives, and you know, on the one hand it’s actually super impressive that Miss USA is making this happen. They’re doing the interviews virtually and having a much smaller event, and a few pageants have gone virtual, so there was, like, Miss World USA who was selected, and everyone submitted videos of themselves competing, and what used to be called America’s Junior Miss, it’s now called Distinguished Young Woman, they still had their pageant in June, and, like, literally, the winner learned she’s the winner in a video sitting in her backyard wearing, like, shorts and a T-shirt, so –
Sarah: Aw!
Dr. Levey Friedman: – different.
[Laughter]
Sarah: So I always ask this question, because people are always looking for books to read: do you have any books that you have read recently that you want to recommend? Any genre, any topic. If, if you dug it, we want to know about it.
Dr. Levey Friedman: Well, I actually love YA, probably ‘cause it’s the genre that really, really made me fall in love with reading, so I’m always on the lookout for good YA, and probably the best – my, like, most recent five-star book was called Tune It Out, which is about a girl who, interestingly, her mom tries to force her to sing and perform and try to make it that way, but it’s a lot of issues about addiction and poverty and family dynamics, and it was really, really an extraordinary book, so I definitely recommend Tune It Out.
[music]
Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast. Thank you again to Hilary Levey Friedman for hanging out with me and for sending me a copy of this book. I will have links to where you can find your own copy or request from your library in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, and I will have links to all the books we talked about as well, because we’re here to help you connect with the books that you want to read. It’s kind of like the whole purpose of the show and the website and everything. We even have a mission statement! It’s true; I came up with one, ‘cause that’s apparently a thing you do, mission statements.
And if you would like to get in touch with me, I would love to hear from you. You can email me at [email protected], especially if you would like Amanda and me to hook you up with some book recs, ‘cause I have another episode with me and Amanda coming very soon. So just tell us what you want to read and we’ll come up with ideas for you. Or you can leave a message, or a bad joke, at 1-201-371-3272.
But as usual, it’s time for the bad joke, the very bad joke that I mentioned in the intro and that I just mentioned in the voicemail option, and now it’s time for the actual bad joke. I have kept you waiting long enough! Are you ready? This one comes from author Lauren Dane’s Instagram, and it’s really bad. I love it a lot.
What do you call a factory that makes okay product?
What do you call a factory that makes okay product?
A satisfactory.
[Laughs] It is so silly! Eh, it’s a satisfactory. This is particularly apt for me because it is the end of the grading period here, and wow, do I wish our virtual schooling was pass/fail again, but it’s not, so, you know, I’m aiming for satisfactory or above in all things, right? Yeah! Take the pressure off.
So on behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend. We will see you back here next week!
Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to listen to at frolic.media/podcasts.
[fading music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
Remember to subscribe to our podcast feed, find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
If the author who is this week’s guest is a fan of old Hollywood stories, the podcast hosted by Karina Longworth, You Must Remember This, did a season of eight episodes about the overlap between Hollywood and the beauty industry. The last one discusses Vanessa Williams in particular and the pressure that people like she and Whitney Houston were put under to not only be beautiful but exceptionally talented to even get half the acclaim that other white women in the same industries would get.
The season is called Make Me Over and it covers episodes 152 to 159 of the podcast.
This book sounds very interesting, and I’m generally not interested in pageants. In a similar vein, Elwood Watson, a professor at the university I work at, co-edited a book of essays called “”There she is, Miss America” : the politics of sex, beauty, and race in America’s most famous pageant” that might be interesting to anyone who wants to read more on the topic.
The discussion also reminded me of a romance novel called “Don’t Forget to Smile” by Kathleen Gilles Seidel from the 90’s (I think). The heroine was a former pageant queen who gets involved with a blue collar guy in a small economically depressed lumber town. His younger sister wants to win the local pageant so she can go to the state pageant to win scholarship money for college, so he asks her to help. There’s a fair amount about how pageants work and how she got involved and why she’s not any more. It was a good story, and I enjoyed the way she and the hero both evolved and grew into their relationship.
Maybe this is tacky to say on the comments page of a podcast interview with the author, but I was really excited to read this book because of the fascinating interview, and then I saw a review on Amazon which pointed out how the author kept referring to people with disabilities as differently abled. Something which I can confirm after having checked out the book from Bookshare. I cannot speak for others with disabilities, but I can speak for myself as one person with blindness, and I really don’t like that term. I’m not sure why, and I may never be able to come up with a reason, but I wish the author had used person first language. I am completely aware how cumbersome this method is, but it’s the best those within the disability community have come up with. To give an example from within the book, the author referred to Heather Whitestone as the first differently abled Miss America. If I were her, I would have referred to her as the first Miss America with a disability. What makes this disappointing, is that a simple Google search reveals a page from the ADA website which essentially says the same thing about writing about those with disabilities.
For what it is worth the review I saw was by someone named Nicole Kelly, a previous Miss America with a disability who was mentioned in the book. She had written a review criticizing the aforementioned language used to refer to people with disabilities, and what the author had written about her in the book as well. To my knowledge, this specific information regarding Kelly was corrected later, so I did not see the specific passage sited in her review.
@SBSarah:
I am really sorry to be such a downer, when I know this is a book you really enjoyed. I couldn’t decide whether to post this publicly or let you know using a more private method of communication.
@Stefanie:
You don’t have to apologize – subjects like these are important and should be discussed. I hadn’t seen that review before the interview. I appreciate your perspective and I am glad you brought it up. Language choice is important, especially person-first language choices.
Please be aware that the author uses the term differently abled several times within her book to refer to those with disabilities when the agreed upon way about writing about those who are disabled within the disability community is to use person first language. I wouldn’t have noticed this, had a one star review for this book not caught my eye so-to-speak. This review was written by someone who was mentioned in the book. I am aware of this language both from a job perspective and personal one as a person who is blind and writes about accessibility and those with disabilities although not in academic journals or anything similar. Differently abled is not a term I use in either case. While the interview was fascinating, for this reason I am going to proceed with caution.
@SBSarah:
Thank you very much. In Dr. Freeman’s defense, I did take a look at the section in question and saw that she did tend to follow the conventions I had outlined. I am aware that I am looking at a copy of what is presumably the finished book, while Nicole Kelly, the reviewer in question, was looking at an arc. In the copy I had access to, the term differently abled was used a couple of times, once to describe a person with a hearing impairment, who was the first person with a disability to be crowned Miss America, and the second was to describe a person who was a diabetic. She was described as having a differently abled body, and while that might be better than describing the whole person as differently abled, I’m still not sure what I think of it. Until today, I didn’t know the history behind that term, and Google/the internet says it was coined by the Democratic National Committee in the 1980s to describe people with disabilities. Since I’m not aware of any politicians back then who had disabilities, I can presume, and the internet lead me to believe, that this means the term came from outside the community it was supposed to represent. This term was coined with good intentions, to show how people with what we traditionally think of as disabilities have other abilities, but the problem I have with it is that we are all differently abled whether we are disabled or not. I am aware that you could talk to an individual who is exactly like me in any other aspect and get a completely different take on it. I also suspect that we have person first language in the first place, because there were those within and outside of the community who didn’t like those with disabilities being described as disabled people, a distinction which seems small but is important. This is where I think it is either important to ask the person themselves, and failing that, use the accepted language. In my reports to the staff in my department, I use the first person language, and try to mention specific disabilities. Interestingly, a newer to me term I am a fan of is print disabled. I feel that it acknowledges that the print medium, or hard copy print, is what disables us whether we have blindness, low-vision, Dyslexia, or we can’t physically lift a book. Again, I know there are people who might not like this term either.
As I said before, I will probably read the book since I found the interview so interesting, but be more cautious and take this experience into consideration when I do. I can see why this would be a total and complete deal breaker though.
I realize I got the Author’s name wrong. I meant to write Dr. Friedman. Since I have a last name people confuse as well, my apologies go out to her.