Meet Miss Subways: New York's Beauty Queens 1941-1976

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Fiona Gardner

is a New York based artist/photographer. She has a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Columbia University. She has worked at the New York Times Magazine since 2006. Miss Subways first appeared as a photo portfolio in the New York Times City Section in 2007. This is her first book.

Amy Zimmer is an award-winning New

York City-based journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Metro New York and on public radio. She is an editor and reporter at DNAinfo.com, New York’s leading hyper-local news source. She received her BA from Yale and a Masters in Journalism from New York University.

the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania. Peiss is the author of seven books, and her articles have appeared in Daedalus, Business History Review, Enterprise and Society, Genders, American Literary History, and Social Problems. She has served as a consultant to museums, archives, public history projects, and films, and has appeared in several documentaries.

TIMES SQUARE

This engaging book reclaims the back-stories of a lineage of everyday women whose youthful faces and aspirations—factual and fabricated— accompanied riders on New York City’s subways for 35 years. The stories of “Miss Subways” reflect the entangled histories of incipient feminism, civil rights, commercialism and celebrity intrigue, staged daily on the City’s public transportation system. —Jan Ramirez, chief curator National September 11 Memorial & Museum

What a brilliant idea to find these women, photograph them, and learn their stories. These profiles give us four decades of women’s history as it was lived by a group of spirited women. I grew up riding the subway with these posters, but you don’t have to be a New Yorker to love these women and this book. —Maxine Leeds Craig, University of California, Davis and author of Ain’t I a Beauty Queen: Black Women, Beauty and the Politics of Race

A work of great insight and empathy, this book shows us how a disparate group of “ordinary” women made extraordinary lives for themselves in the big city.

Photography by Fiona Gardner Writing by Amy Zimmer

Kathy Peiss is Department Chair and

New York’s Beauty Queens 1941-1976 New York’s Beauty Queens 1941-1976

C o n t r i b ut o r s

Meet

or thirty-five years, New York City subways and busses featured posters with the pretty face and brief biography of local career girls—winners in the Miss Subways contest. Who are these women? A fine art photographer and a journalist tracked down over 146 posters and met 41 Miss Subways in person, interviewing them about their lives since the contest and photographing them at home. The result is a lost archive of a New York City phenomenon and a celebration of the lives of regular women told in their own words and through personal memorabilia. An absorbing read that combines compelling stories with rich visuals, Meet Miss Subways reminds us that we don’t need to be “heroes” to write history.

—Clifton Hood, author of “722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York”

Cover photo credits: Fiona Gardner For details on otherDe voluptiore cone eosandis quam, omnihil igenim reptas nos rem illitas re, simagni minturiatemBus, odit latem fuga. Itas

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This book unearths a magical, lost chapter of New York City history. I’ll never forget the first time I laid eyes on the Miss Subways posters. I really wanted to take the train! —Paul Anka, Singer/Songwriter

This book is a discovery of sorts, one that is a reflection of our own understanding of how beauty is framed in everyday life and also reflective of the models who challenged beauty standards during their time. It is groundbreaking for the way in which it synthesizes a history of Miss Subways as the first integrated beauty contest in America, and represented the diversity of New York cultural history by foregrounding images of women. —Deborah Willis, New York University Tisch School of the Arts Chair, Department of Photography & Imaging Author of Posing Beauty: African American Images 1890 to the Present

Extensively researched and beautifully documented, this book is a testament to the poetry in everyday lives. —Joe Richman, Founder, Radio Diaries

To have been born to a Miss Subways, to share a lifetime of learning with her, and for her to be my best friend, is very special indeed. My mother, Ruth Lippman, represents beauty, intelligence, and grace. I am so pleased that she and all these singular women are now being celebrated and immortalized in this splendid book.

Photography by Fiona Gardner Text by Amy Zimmer with an intro by historian Kathy Peiss

—Jane Friedman, Co-founder and CEO, Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.; former CEO, HarperCollins Publishers, Worldwide


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