Protests at the Miss America contest in Atlantic City in November 1968 and in 1969, when feminists mockingly crowned a sheep, gave the emerging movement high visibility. Protesters argued that the beauty contest was a symbol of the way women in general are objectified, diminished, and judged primarily on appearance. ‘Every day in a woman’s life is a walking Miss World Contest’, one feminist remarked wearily.

Women within the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Movement, and Students for a Democratic Society complained that, too often, they were treated as ‘typists, tea-makers and sexual objects’.