How do you say that?
Here are the phonetic transcriptions of words taken from this issue of Spotlight that may be difficult to pronounce.
EASY MEDIUM ADVANCED
hen I set out to write a book about Miss America almost two years ago, I knew the most important person to talk to would be Phyllis George.
It’s a strange institution, the Miss America pageant. It was started nearly a century ago on the beach of Atlantic City, New Jersey, as a way to promote the area as a tourist destination. The first winner was Margaret Gorman, a 16-year-old school pupil from Washington, DC.
The Miss America pageant was never supposed to be anything more than a beauty contest. But it somehow came to be about other things — like ambition, merit, and charisma. And Phyllis George, a contestant from Denton, Texas, had a lot to do with this.
In some ways, she was just the latest in a series of beautiful girls to win the crown. But she won it as the world was starting to change — in 1971, the dawn of the women’s movement. And she had the energy and ambition to take advantage of the moment. While her fellow Miss Americas of that era quickly married and began having children after winning the title, George started looking for jobs.
In 1974, she joined CBS Sports, becoming one of America’s first female TV sportscasters. Many male critics made fun of her — calling her a lightweight and criticizing her lack of sports experience. But George focused on the work and turned into a hero for a generation of younger women, who saw her on television and realized, for the first time, that it was possible to be a successful woman working in a man’s world. And some of those women became sportswriters because of her.
George also had to deal with sexual harassment at work — before most people were aware of what “sexual harassment” meant, and before there were guidelines for how to respond to it.
George’s success in sports was so great that she was soon picked to be an anchorwoman on one of the major networks. But many jealous colleagues — who felt she had been promoted too fast, who mocked her “beauty queen” past — were eager to see her fail. Meanwhile, she was balancing the needs of her family with the demands of such a high-profile job. After less than a year, she quit her job to stay home with her two young children. In this way, she also symbolized the struggles faced by a generation of working women.
George retreated from the spotlight very quickly. When I was a child in the 1970s, she was one of the most famous women in America. However, many younger people today don’t know who she was. That’s why I enjoyed writing her story — a major chapter in my book, which will come out next year.
Sadly, though, Phyllis George died in May, at the age of 70. I’m grateful I got to hear her story. I’m only sorry that she won’t get to see how another new generation of women responds to it.