Contests are more than cheescake

The cover would be unheard of today.

But back about 1962, it seemed perfectly acceptable.

This month’s Heritage Festival at the Jay County Historical Museum is centered around honoring all those women who have held — or competed for — the title of Jay County Fair Queen over the years.

And that brings me back to the cover.

In the summer of 1962, I was a paperboy. (Still am in some ways, I suppose.) I’d graduated from my first route on Main Street to a route that stretched from Pleasant Street to the edge of town on Race Street, then came back home on North Street.

The Graphic Printing Company had acquired The Commercial Review and the Dunkirk News and Sun in 1959, but The Graphic lived on — sort of — as a weekly offset tabloid called “Pictures and Features.”

Photo reproduction in the daily was iffy at best, so the weekly tabloid — printed offset rather than letterpress — was full of pictures.

And that summer day when I was passing papers, the front cover of the tabloid was full of cheesecake.

It featured all of the candidates for queen of the Jay County Fair. And it featured them in bathing suits.

It was enough to make the eyes of a 13-year-old paperboy pop out of their sockets. All that beauty.

Did it treat the young women like objects? You bet it did. Would it be dismissed as inappropriate today? You bet it would.

But this was more than 50 years ago.

The world has changed. And as the father of daughters, I’d say it has changed for the better.

But back in 1962, passing my papers, I was developing crushes on this candidate or that or the other all along the way down Race Street and back down North Street.

It didn’t get any better in 1963. That year, at the ripe old age of 14, I tried to be a little more mature and discriminating when the swimsuit edition on the local paper came out. Quickly, I pinned my affection on Barbara Orr, who went on to win the title.

The good news is that the swimsuit photo competition disappeared over the years.

In the 1970s, the newspaper started focusing on individual candid photos of the competitors. No swimsuits involved.

The emphasis was, from the beginning, on making each young woman look her best. If we’re successful, the queen contestant will feel better about herself when the photo is published.

The result of that approach has been contact with lots of queen contestants along the way.

And I’m always surprised by how much they are enjoying themselves.

Pageants like this are often dismissed as demeaning — probably because of things like those 1960s swimsuit editions of the paper — but the participants uniformly tell me the process builds their confidence, connects them with other girls their age and builds friendships.

So, maybe, we’re finally getting things like this right.

The swimsuit edition has been retired and only exists in the memories of old paperboys. Instead, the emphasis is on the things that matter: Character, achievement and personality.

And my guess is that’s what the historical society will be celebrating later this month. That’s the way it should be.