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In 1982, when Williams was 19 and home for the summer after her freshman year of college, she took a job as a receptionist/makeup artist with a local photographer considerably older than she named Tom Chiapel. Williams later described the moment thusly: 'I felt… like I had been raped.' The cover boy was George Burns, the beloved geriatric actor who'd played the All Mighty in the recent hit comedy Oh God! 'Miss America: Oh, God, She's Nude!' the headline would read. Williams had already been through the wringer and then some by the time she found out, in mid-July 1984, via a New York Post reporter, that she was about to become Penthouse's cover girl, an honor she neither asked for nor wanted. About being the butt of a quote-unquote joke by Johnny Carson.'Did you hear we have the first Black Miss America?' he asked the crowd during a Tonight Show monologue. About the sharpshooters installed on rooftops for her parade in Millwood, New York, the predominantly white suburb of Westchester County where she'd grown up with her parents, both teachers, and younger brother. In You Have No Idea, Williams' 2012 memoir, co-authored by her mother, she writes about the hate mail she received ('You're all black scum') the threats to kill ('YOU'RE DEAD, BITCH') the threats to maim (acid in the face). It was a milestone, however, not everyone was happy Williams had reached. Shirley Chisholm, 'that this nation has been able to select the beautiful young woman of color to be Miss America.'

'Thank God I have lived long enough,' said Rep. 'Thank God I have lived long enough that this nation has been able to select the beautiful young woman of color to be Miss America,' said Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress, who took William's victory as a sign that 'the inherent racism in America must be diluting itself.' Black women had only been allowed to compete since 1971.

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And for a Black woman to take the prize, be chosen as the country's official-'official,' at the time, being code for 'white'-feminine ideal, was a milestone. Williams wasn't just the reigning Miss America, she was also the first Black Miss America. Bagging on it, though, was like bagging on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

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(Making the participants strut across the stage in itsy-bitsy-teeny-weenies and high heels was different from a bikini contest exactly how?) And it was mostly boring and more than a little dumb, plus deeply, profoundly, uncool. And, yeah, OK, sure, those second-wave feminists, the ones who called it a 'degrading Mindless-Boob-Girlie Symbol,' did kind of have a point. The pageant then was compulsory viewing for much of the public, and winning it was atop many a little girl's to-do list. Miss America isn't a big thing now, is barely a thing at all, but it certainly was when Williams, 20 at the time, a junior at Syracuse University, took the title on September 17, 1983. In 1984, Vanessa Williams was the reigning Miss America. Vanessa Williams being crowned as Miss America 1984. A porn star-an underage one at that-was born because of the issue. A queen was dethroned because of the issue. And then, two years later, the FBI came to the offices and took away all the issues. When it hit stands, I was fielding over a hundred calls a day. Leslie Jay-Gould, Penthouse's then-vice president and director of public relations: 'The issue was beyond huge, was beyond anything. Which meant you had to see the fucking magazine.' But the media couldn't really cover the Penthouse story because the pictures we had were just too scandalous. You'd read about them in newspapers, or watch them covered on TV. But the media could report on those stories. Bloch again: 'I mean, People magazine would do stories on Jackie Kennedy or whoever, and it would be a big story and the issue would sell. There were guys paying-a dollar for a peek. The most important news in the history of our country, having a woman vice presidential nominee, was overshadowed by the fact that we had…well, that we had what we had.' The front page of that paper was our story. Somebody in the press got an advance copy, and released it to the New York Post or the Daily News, one of those, the same exact day that Walter Mondale announced he was picking Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate. Richard Bleiweiss, Penthouse's then-art director: 'The thing about this issue is, it became the biggest news story in the world. So there were guys paying-and this is something I saw with my own eyes-a dollar for a peek. Peter Bloch, Penthouse's then-executive editor: 'It was the best-selling issue of Penthouse of all time.

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How to convey the magnitude of the frenzy? Because my mind is in the past (the mid-eighties) and in the gutter (the porn biz) for reasons that will become clear, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the September 1984 issue of Penthouse.

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