The Pink Dress: A Memoir of a Reluctant Beauty Queen by Jane Little Botkin
For fans of Little Miss Sunshine and Secrets of Miss America, this memoir from a national award-winning author reveals the reality of being the first Guyrex Girl in the 1970s. Beauty pageant stories have never been this raw, this real.
Growing up in West Texas, Jane Little Botkin didn’t have designs on becoming a beauty queen. But not long after joining a pageant on a whim in college, she became the first protégé of El Paso’s Richard Guy and Rex Holt, known as the “Kings of Beauty”—just as the 1970’s counterculture movement began to take off.
A pink, rose-covered gown—a Guyrex creation—symbolizes the fairy tale life that young women in Jane’s time imagined beauty queens had. Its near destruction exposes reality: the author’s failed relationship with her mother, and her parents’ failed relationship with one another. Weaving these narrative threads together is the Wild West notion that anything is possible, especially do-overs.
The Pink Dress awakens nostalgia for the 1960s and 1970s, the era’s conflicts and growth pains. A common expectation that women went to college to get “MRS” degrees—to find a husband and become a stay-at-home wife and mother—often prevailed. How does one swim upstream against this notion among feminist voices that protest “If You Want Meat, Go to a Butcher!” at beauty pageants, two flamboyant showmen, and a developing awareness of self? Torn between women’s traditional roles and what women could be, Guyrex Girls evolved, as did the author.
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Author Bio:
National award-winning author Jane Little Botkin melds personal narratives of American families with compelling stories of western women. Her books have won numerous awards in biography, western historical nonfiction, and women’s studies, including two Spur Awards, two Caroline Bancroft History Prizes, the Barbara Sudler Award for best book about the American West by a woman, Women Writing the West’s Willa Literary Award biography finalist, High Plains Nonfiction Book Award Finalist, Foreword Indies Bronze Award in women’s studies, Sarton Book Award finalist in women’s studies, and Independent Publisher Book Awards’ Bronze Medal for Best Regional Nonfiction.
Recently completed, The Pink Dress, Memoir of a Reluctant Beauty Queen will release September 10, 2024 (She Writes Press). She is currently working on The Breath of a Buffalo, a biography of Mary Ann (Molly) Goodnight, tentatively scheduled for release in 2026.
A member of Western Writers of America since 2017, Jane sits on its board of directors and serves as vice president. She also judges entries for the WWA’s prestigious Spur Award, reviews new releases, and writes articles for various magazines. A late-bloomer, Jane served as a public-school teacher for thirty years before turning to historical investigation and writing. In 2008 the Texas state legislature honored her career in education by formal resolution. Most notably she directed her students to produce and publish a collection of oral and documented county history essays annually. Now she blissfully escapes into her literary world in the remote White Mountain Wilderness near Nogal, New Mexico.