Summer 1968 I'm the woman behind the puppet. Bev Grant later did a newsreel of my Auctioneering Miss America spiel. I can't remember it except it included 'you can use her (Miss A] to sell war and and to sell off rotten smelly stuff to mothers to torture daughters in the name of beauty, which is whatever you aren't, curly hair if your's is straight, straight hair if yhours is curly. Florika who had wild kinky hair was chained to the puppet. Bonnie Allen, whose hair was still straightened was chained to the other side. Toni Home Permanent was the sponsor of the pageant and what I'd brought to throw into the trash can of things we were being liberated from. I can still remember the stinky stingy solution my mom held my head down in the sink and poured over my hair. Bev and I and a third woman (I think I remember who but don't know if she'd want to be named)took the squirt vials of the foul smelling solution onto the floor of the convention a little while b efore the banner was to drop, and walked inconspicuously, we thought, up each aisle, aiming the squirt bottles at the floor inside the rows. Sponsoring Miss America stinks, and makes us stink. Flo said I "was charged with releasing a stink bomb" because the lawyer she got to represent me in Atlantic City explained the law they finally found to charge me with, "emitting a noxious odor" had been passed against shake down artists who released stink bombs in laundries. Emitting a noxious odor is still my favorite offense. After almost 50 years, Carol and I are quite united. But for the effect of her critique I might have spent those years seeking celebrity.
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December, 2020
I just clicked to see what a stranger would see 'about Peggy Dobbins.' I hate to think that me at 30 is all I did. Me auctioning off Miss America (oh, and the only one arrested) does seem to be all there is if you google. So it's only thanks to Bev Grant who got me to come to the newsreel studio to redo my auctioneer's spiel and Mike Dobbins, who made the puppet, that I'll be remembered at all. Oh well
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August 27, 2021. In conversation with my son last night about the 'culture' behind Clinton-Gingrich Welfare as we knew it Reform, neither of us could remember Daniel Patrick Moynihan. I googled 'female headed household and welfare. and found an article in a French Journal 2003. It was a very good refreshed. And it reminded me I have no links here to work I did as an academic. Moynihan's The Negro Family was 1965. My Matriarchy from Racist Myth to Class Model was 1980. I'm inserting "survival" between Class and Model now.
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