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 Badger
Beauties
Everyone has an opinion when it comes to beauty — and
beauty pageants — and UW-Madison was once no exception. From
a former judge's guidelines and Badger Beauty recollections,
we take a closer look at a forty-year campus tradition.
By Candice Gaukel Andrews '77
I have to admit,
I've never believed them —
those women in swimsuits who walk in front of a panel of judges
and then try to tell me beauty pageants are all about talent, academics,
and winning scholarships.
Right.
Granted, I've read that the new, politically correct Miss
World Pageant has jettisoned the national costumes, skimpy swim
wear, and high heels for the “more natural environment”
of jeans and T-shirts.
Please.
So when I found out that the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
an institution of higher learning in a progressive city —
my own alma mater — actually had a contest for female students
based solely on beauty, I couldn't believe it. But there they
were. In the Badger yearbooks from 1931 to 1969 —
almost four decades — six women (typically) were bestowed
with full-page portraits only because they had been selected as
“Badger Beauties.”
I hoped that the contest might at least be tied to a scholarship,
but my initial research didn't uncover any monetary reward
or civic duty that would accrue to the winners — other than
judging the annual engineering students' beard contest. As
Mary Olmsted Wallace, a 1948 Badger Beauty and spouse of 60
Minutes anchor Mike Wallace, told me, “The contest didn't
have anything to do with talent or brilliance. There were no scholarships
or commercial jobs. I don't think they should have it today.
A contest is kind of silly if it's just based on looks.”
Bingo.
So how did the beauty pageant concept find a home for so long
on the UW-Madison campus, and what did the former Badger Beauties
think about it now? In the Spring 2003 issue of On Wisconsin,
I sent out a call for Badger Beauties to tell me their stories.
I heard from more than forty of them.
It appears to have all started innocently enough — not as
much like a beauty competition as like being given an honorary title
by a loosely organized committee. Prior to 1931, the Badger
yearbooks included a “Wisconsin Women” section featuring
women's athletics, clubs, and sororities. But in that year,
for the first time, five full-page face shots were devoted to the
first so-named “Badger Beauties”: Frances Fosshage,
Margaret Newman, Carolyn Olson, Sally Owen, and Alice Ubbink.
The earliest Badger Beauty I talked to is Ruby Jo Swanstrom, who
told me, “In 1937, it was a complete and utter surprise when
I found out I had been elected from Langdon Hall. I reported to
the Union, where I was interviewed for twenty minutes, and then
I modeled a formal dress. I was told almost immediately I was a
Badger Beauty.”
According to the yearbooks, by 1946 the contest had evolved into
an adjunct of the Junior Prom, with the Beauties serving as the
prom's Court of Honor. By 1954, Badger Beauties had shifted
to functioning as the Military Ball's Court of Honor. And
by 1957, the tradition had turned into a campuswide contest, with
165 entrants vying for the title.
With true competition status came the need for judges, and Badger
yearbook staff strove to give the pageant validity — and publicity
— by employing celebrities. Over the years, judges included
radio, film, and TV personalities such as Fredric March '20,
Bing Crosby, Don Ameche x'31, Phil Silvers, Arthur Godfrey,
Fred S. Meyer (MGM vice president), and Billy Rose (Broadway theater
producer); John Robert Powers of the same-named modeling agency; and
“Pogo” cartoonist, Walt Kelly. And as the contest grew,
the judging criteria became more sophisticated. On December 21, 1944,
the Daily Cardinal reported that George Petty, Sr., one of
the first pin-up artists, “nationally famous for his stimulating
drawings of women for Esquire and other magazines, will judge
the co-eds for their photogenic beauty, personality, and stature.”
I wasn't surprised.
By 1961 those rather subjective three aspects had been expanded
into seven, with verbalized standards. Professional photographer
Duane Hopp '55, who was assistant professor at the Photographic
Media Center on campus from 1958 to 1986, still possesses his original
1961 Judge's Guidelines, and he provided me with
a copy. I now had a concrete piece of the puzzle, with which to
analyze the contest itself.
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