Mrs. NC State: The Beauty Pageant and the Decline of State's Mates

Mary Porterfield's review of the 1968 Mrs. NC State pageant is critical of the pageant because of its declining attendance members.  Porterfield suggests that, due to changes in student population, student wives were becoming increasingly irrelevant to collegiate culture.

From the late 1960's through the early 1970's, State's Mates put on a beauty pageant for Mrs. NC State.  Initially a huge success, the pageant became a symbol for the declining importance of State's Mates in particular and student wives in general, as femininity at NC State increasingly became represented by unmarried female students.

In November of 1968, this review of the Mrs. NC State beauty pageant from The Technician remarked that, due to dwindling attendance, the pageant should be renamed as “Mrs. States Mates Club.”  “Perhaps,” the article added, “it would be better if a project be undertaken to sponsor a Miss NCSU pageant.”

The review is symptomatic of a larger problem that State’s Mates faced in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s: how to respond to shifts in the student population which had created a separate female culture.  According to the reviewer, campus culture had shifted sufficiently by 1968 that male and female students would be more interested in watching a beauty pageant for unmarried students than for student wives.

This letter from the Executive Board of State's Mates to the Editor of The Technician criticized Mary Porterfield's review, which they claimed was "insulting" and "written by someone who knew little or nothing about our cause."

State's Mates defended themselves, though.  A letter to the editor stressed the social importance of State's Mates for the wives of students, saying that they were often "solely responsible for putting their husbands through college."  However, it was becoming increasingly clear that the pageant did not hold the same social importance for the rest of the population at North Carolina State University.

Only a few years earlier, when State’s Mates began to hold the Mrs. NC State pageant, attendance was high.  The pageant was reported on, not only in The Technician, but also in local Raleigh papers.  How did the pageant change over time, and what led to its cancellation in 1972?

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