We've come a long way baby!

British-Kiwi hybrid and Atlas Obscura editorial fellow, Natasha Frost, writes about The Miss Subways Pageant. 

Charting the highs and lows of 20th-Century feminism in New York City - from a 1940s beauty queen to a 2017 performance artist.

This contest initially ran from 1941 through 1976 under the auspices of the precursors of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), and was resuscitated as a pageant by the MTA in 2004 as “Ms. Subways.”

This year it has returned again, but it’s nothing to do with the MTA. This incarnation, held at the City Reliquary in late September, was a protest against everything the contest had once stood for.

For Levy, like so many others, Miss Subways was just woven into the fabric of New York’s underground life—a fleeting piece of pop culture and an artifact of the lives of women in a modern city.