What messages are inherent in beauty pageants, barbie and even icons such Marilyn Monroe in terms of beauty and sexuality in the 1950's? Please discuss all three. How are they able to remain popular during conservative times in the popular culture? How do they uphold some of the messages that dominate the time? What do they say about race and class?

Held since 1952, the worldwide beauty contest for women began as a marketing strategy for a Californian swimwear brand and was televised for the first time in 1955.

One of the most celebrated feminist protests of the 20th century, the one in which American women publicly burned bras, happened in reaction to the “Miss America” of 1968 - a preliminary stage to the global dispute.

Beauty contests have thus become a synthesis of feminism's historic struggle against unattainable beauty standards for women.

Since the 1950s, the perfect body ideal for women has undergone some changes , but over the course of more than six decades of history, all winners were thin, young women, mostly white.

The contest propagates a standard of unattainable beauty that culminates in eating disorders, dissatisfaction with one's own body, depression and other problems that affect women subjected to this standard.