the first ever Miss Americas and bathing beauties from the 1920s

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Stunning photographs taken of beauty pageants a century ago show that nothing has changed yet everything is different.




Vintage snaps from the 1920s, 30s and 40s show smiling young women lined up in their bathing suits, standing side on with a jutted hip and one leg stuck forward - or even in the air.

Bathing beauties: These pretty bathers participated in the annual beauty contest in Coney Island in 1923; the winner went on to the Atlantic City Miss America Pageant

 

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Past pageants: Evelyn Lewis, ABOVE, competed in the Miss America pageant as Miss Washington in 1922; BELOW three contestants, including Miss Coney Island winners from 1924 and 1925, look like naturals

 

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Miss America: Competing as Miss Philadelphia, Ruth Malcolmson, ABOVE, won the Golden Mermaid trophy in Atlantic City in 1924 to become Miss America. Alma Carroll, BELOW, wearing an Army overseas cap, has answered the beauty draft call here, hoping to be crowned Miss America of National Defense in 1934

 

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Pretty as a picture: Atlantic City's Bathing Beauties of 1922 point their toes and nervously smile for the camera

 

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Political pose: Beauty pageant contestants with NRA tattoos line up in Miami in the 1930s

 

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Bathing beauties: Women and a little girl dressed in the latest in 1920s swimwear line up for a bathing beauty contest

 

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Californian girls: Santa Monica beauty pageant winner Laura Hover, ABOVE, peers through the shapely legs of her fellow contenders. Seen BELOW, beauty contestants protest in Venice, California, over Atlantic City's monopoly on the beauty pageant business

 

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Striking a pose: Contestants in the upcoming South Boston, Virginia beauty pageant at the National Tobacco Festival stand naked in a large hickory barrel. In 1922 Mary Catherine Campbell (as Miss Columbus) wins the Miss America title at Atlantic City, with Hudson Maxim as Neptune