Miss America 1922

Miss America 1922, the second Miss America pageant, was held at the Million Dollar Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey on September 7, 1922. Joining the contestants during the "bathing revue," the parade of beauty pageant hopefuls, were the Mayor of Atlantic City and the entire police force, all wearing their bathing attire.

Mary Katherine Campbell, competing as Miss Columbus in the pageant, edged out the previous year's winner, Margaret Gorman, who competed as "Miss America" in the 1922 event, to claim the Inter-City Beauty title. Campbell then competed against "Professional" beauty winner Dorothy Knapp and "Amateur" beauty winner Gladys Greenmayer to win the title of Miss America for 1922.

Norman Rockwell judged the Miss America 1922 bathing beauty contest along with Howard Chandler Christy and James Montgomery Flagg. They were all unclear as to how to judge the contest. One judge suggested that they judge each part or feature of the body out of ten, then the woman with the total highest score would win. After they had tried the system, they discovered that although one woman might have beautiful individual parts or features, she might not be beautiful over all. So they "...gave up trying to figure out a system and resolved to trust our eyes. It led to squabbles, because all of us didn't see things in the same way, but it was the best we could do."