Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Pink Dress: A Memoir of a Reluctant Beauty Queen

The Pink Dress: A Memoir of a Reluctant Beauty Queen

Botkin, Jane Little
Gideon, Ann Marie

Audio Book

Entertainment & Performing ArtsBiographies General

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ISBN13: 9798228683402
Publisher: Tantor
Published: Sep 30 2025
Language: English

Growing up in West Texas, Jane Little Botkin didn't have designs on becoming a beauty queen. But not long after joining a pageant on a whim in college, she became the first protégé of El Paso's Richard Guy and Rex Holt, known as the Kings of Beauty--just as the 1970's counterculture movement began to take off.

A pink, rose-covered gown--a Guyrex creation--symbolizes the fairy tale life that young women in Jane's time imagined beauty queens had. Its near destruction exposes reality: the author's failed relationship with her mother, and her parents' failed relationship with one another. Weaving these narrative threads together is the Wild West notion that anything is possible, especially do-overs.

The Pink Dress awakens nostalgia for the 1960s and 1970s, the era's conflicts and growth pains. A common expectation that women went to college to get MRS degrees--to find a husband and become a stay-at-home wife and mother--often prevailed. How does one swim upstream against this notion among feminist voices that protest If You Want Meat, Go to a Butcher! at beauty pageants, two flamboyant showmen, and a developing awareness of self? Torn between women's traditional roles and what women could be, Guyrex Girls evolved, as did the author.

2 different editions

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