Meet Miss Subways

Radio Diaries

Radio Diaries & Radiotopia

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2024

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Most beauty pageants promote the fantasy of the ideal woman. But for 35 years, one contest in New York City celebrated the everyday working girl: Miss Subways.

Each month starting in May 1941, a young woman was elected “Miss Subways,” and her face gazed down on transit riders as they rode through the city. Her photo was accompanied by a short bio describing her hopes, dreams and aspirations. The public got to choose the winners – so Miss Subway represented the perfect New York miss.

Miss Subways was one of the first integrated beauty pageants in America. An African-American Miss Subways was selected in 1948 – more than thirty years before there was a Black Miss America. By the 1950s, there were Miss Subways who were Black, Asian, Jewish, and Hispanic – the faces of New York’s female commuters.

This episode originally aired on NPR in 2012.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Radio Diaries, this is Joe, and before we get started, we want to
0:04.2	shout out another show in the Radio Topia family.
0:07.6	In the scenes behind Plainsight is back for its fourth season.
0:11.1	It's a rewatch podcast hosted by two stars of Behind Plainsight, a mid-2000s hit TV
0:17.2	show set in a nudist colony.
0:19.9	And if you don't remember Behind Plainsight, it's because it never existed.
0:23.7	The podcast is pure fiction, and funny.
0:26.6	I'm a New York magazine named the show one of the best podcasts of 2023, so check it
0:30.6	out.
0:31.6	Listen to In the Scenes Behind Plainsight, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:36.2	Radio Topia.
0:39.5	From PRX.
0:41.5	From PRX's Radio Topia, this is Radio Diaries.
0:43.8	I'm Joe Richmond.
0:47.8	In 1941, the most famous subway rider in New York City was a 14-year-old girl named
0:52.8	Mona Freeman, a so-called beauty authority.
0:56.3	John Robert Powers, who ran a modeling agency, crowned her the city's first Miss Subways,
1:01.5	and plastered her photo on the IRT, BMT, and IND lines.
1:05.8	Her placard included a short bio, a vivacious Mona Freeman writes for her school paper,
1:10.6	it said, she's interested in school dramatics, Broadway and Hollywood, please note.
1:15.8	By the way, before she won the Miss Subways crown, Mona had never even been on the subway.
1:20.8	Mona Freeman was the first Miss Subways, but not the last.
	...

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