Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

Last month, the Miss America pageant took place as it has most every year since 1921.

But this time, something was different.

2018 was the first year that the contest took place without a swimsuit competition.

The decision to go without a swimsuit contest was an effort by organizers to revamp the event for the Me Too era.

But it's also just the latest chapter of a debate that has been simmering since the pageant first started. Between critics who say the

event objectifies women and proponents who say you can't have a successful pageant without it.

But swimsuits?

Actually, the debate has never been about an actual article of clothing.

It's about what society considers to represent a respectable woman, a standard that has changed in numerous ways over the years.

Let's go back to that first pageant in 1921.

It took place in Atlantic City, where hotel owners wanted a big event to extend the summer season after Labor Day.

The pageant was a huge success and became the template for others to come.

According to Kimberly Hamlin, a history professor at Miami University in Ohio, the pageant

wasn't intended to celebrate the modern woman of the 1920s.

She said the judges ended up promoting images of the girls of yesterday, small, childlike, subservient,

and malleable. The winner was 15-year-old Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C.

She and two others caused a stir after they were allowed to roll their stockings below the knee.

At the time, female bathers on Atlantic City beaches were required to wear stockings to avoid any display of bare skin.

It wasn't long until controversy took hold.

For one thing, the organizers didn't like how the winners began using their crowns for commercial

game, like appearing in Hollywood films. Take their crown,

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