Sunday, April 26, 2015

How many women participate at each state competition?

Have you ever wondered which state program is the largest?  And if those rankings have changed over the years?

In 1989 (in the dark ages before the internet), I was in Atlantic City as part of the Miss Texas delegation, and I actually went to the Miss America offices where they had a copy of each state's program in the lobby.  I sat in the lobby and went through EVERY program and counted the number of contestants. Yeah, I'm that nerdy and statistic-obsessed.

Then the internet became available to the general public, and research became MUCH easier!

State competitions as we know them today began in 1945 when Lenora Slaughter, Miss America's ED from 1935 through her retirement in 1967, approached the North Carolina Jaycees about starting a state program.  Texas followed two months later and soon each state had an official program that selected a representative for Miss America, many run by Jaycees chapters.  City winners going directly to Miss America started being phased out, and by 1959 every state was finally sending a winner to Atlantic City.

For many years NORTH CAROLINA conducted the largest state program in the country.  1964 & 1965 both saw 93 contestants at state and the number rose to 98 (!) in 1966 & 1968 before dropping to 70 in 1970 (MINNESOTA had the largest state program in 1970 with 72 contestants).

TEXAS averaged in the teens in the 1940s, ranged from the high teens to the low 40s in the 1950s (14 in 1952 and 42 in 1959), hit the 50s and 60s in the 1960s, stayed in the upper 50s and the 60s during the 1970s, and reached its peak in 1982 when it had 82 local winners competing over four nights of preliminary competition (and they all had to be Ziegfeld girls for the opening number - legend has it that Dawan McPeak, who would later became Miss New York 1986,  had live birds in birdcages hanging from her head dress). Texas stayed in the 60s for most of the 1980s.  In the mid and late 1990s the numbers dipped back into the upper 40s, and the numbers kept dropping in the 2000s bottoming out at 32 in 2007.  In the 2010s Texas has grown back into one of the largest state programs in the nation.  Randy Pruett's "A Dream As Big As Texas" (2010) provided a few contestants totals that I didn't already have.

FLORIDA (which had 38 contestants in 1963) hit the 50 contestant level in the early 80's and stayed in the 47-53 contestant range through 1996.  The contestant total then dropped into the upper 30s and low 40s, but Florida has brought its contestant total back into that 47-53 range in the last several years.

INDIANA averaged in the 20s throughout the 1960s and 70's, peaking at 29 contestants in 1969. In the 1990s the state dropped into the teens, bottoming out at 14 contestants in 1997.  Since then the state has grown consistently under new leadership and has had more than 30 contestants for five years straight.  2015 will be Indiana's largest program in history with 35 contestants.

Here is a comparison of the number of contestants in each state in 2015, 2010, 1999, and 1989. What's interesting is that 25+ years ago there were very few locals that awarded more than one title, and today there are few locals that DON'T award more than one title.

The rankings were determined by averaging the total contestants over the four representative years (or three, if I don't have the current total).

SEND ME UPDATES for states I don't have totals for yet, or if I have any numbers wrong.  Post on the CROWNED Facebook page or email me at crownedmissa@gmail.com.


Rank STATE 2015 2010 1999 1989 Average
1 UTAH 53 54 58 60 56
2 TEXAS 57 33 54 69 53
3 ALABAMA 50 48 47 57 51
4 CALIFORNIA 53 56 49 42 50
5 SOUTH CAROLINA 55 50 42 43 48
6 ARKANSAS 46 44 46 48 46
7 FLORIDA 47 46 40 50 46
8 OKLAHOMA 47 43 42 48 45
9 GEORGIA 44 40 47 47 45
10 MISSISSIPPI 30 45 37 40 38
11 NORTH CAROLINA 37 28 35 47 37
12 TENNESSEE 36 37 30 40 36
13 LOUISIANA 35 29 26 40 33
14 PENNSYLVANIA 40 35 26 26 32
15 MISSOURI 26 24 32 40 31
16 MICHIGAN 34 30 26 31 30
17 KENTUCKY 32 30 31 27 30
18 OHIO 22 26 30 38 29
19 VIRGINIA 27 30 26 31 29
20 ILLINOIS 31 24 24 32 28
21 NEW JERSEY 28 27 21 26 26
22 INDIANA 35 29 17 19 25
23 WISCONSIN 26 25 23 25 25
24 COLORADO 30 28 11 22 23
25 NEW YORK 29 20 21 20 23
26 NORTH DAKOTA 22 20 24 22 22
27 MARYLAND 24 22 21 20 22
28 KANSAS 22 20 18 26 22
29 MASSACHUSETTS 23 22 18 23 22
30 MINNESOTA 27 20 15 24 22
31 NEW HAMPSHIRE 27 27 15 15 21
32 OREGON 21 24 21 17 21
33 WEST VIRGINIA 20 25 22 14 20
34 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 18 17 16 22 18
35 ARIZONA 24 21 16 12 18
36 HAWAII 28 22 10 12 18
37 WASHINGTON 21 19 14 18 18
38 IOWA 16 18 17 17 17
39 CONNECTICUT 13 18 11 22 16
40 NEBRASKA 13 14 18 18 16
41 IDAHO 12 22 12 15 15
42 NEW MEXICO 23 23 7 7 15
43 DELAWARE 10 16 17 15 15
44 RHODE ISLAND 12 11 13 19 14
45 SOUTH DAKOTA 13 13 14 15 14
46 ALASKA 13 12 15 12 13
47 NEVADA 14 16 9 13
48 MONTANA 15 6 14 12
49 WYOMING 9 16 8 11
50 VERMONT 9 12 10 11 11
51 MAINE 7 13 8 10 10
52 PUERTO RICO n/a n/a 0
53 VIRGIN ISLANDS n/a n/a n/a 0
TOTALS 1368 1350 1231 1385 1342



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