Lessons in Chemistry: Did pageants like Little Miss Hastings really exist?

Lessons in Chemistry, Apple TV+’s latest miniseries, opened with “Little Miss Hastings,” an episode that not only introduces us to present day Elizabeth Zott who is the host of Supper at Six but also who she was seven years prior. Before she became a household name, she was a lab tech at the Hastings Research Institute where her intellect was overlooked and there were consistent attempts to force her into the gendered social norms of the time.

One example of this is actually represented by the title of the series opener. Little Miss Hastings refers to the company pageant that’s being held. The title of the beauty competition suggests that it’s for little girls, however, it’s actually one meant for grown women, specifically the female workforce at the institute.

Initially, Elizabeth declines participating in the pageant but, after head secretary Fran Frask catches her using the lab after hours and tells the head of the institute Dr. Robert Donatti, she’s compelled to become a contestant lest she lose her job. The Little Miss Hastings pageant is similar to standard beauty contests, the categories include evening wear, swimsuit, and talent.

In the series, the pageant is considered to be a part of the company’s culture that helps keep up morale. To my own modern sensibilities, it seemed out of place considering this is a research facility. But did these kind of company pageants actually exist? Surprisingly, yes.

Lessons in Chemistry sheds light on company pageants in its premiere

“Little Miss Hastings” is accurate in its representation of ’50s workplace history when it comes to the inclusion of a pageant. While there’s not much information on these kind of “morale boosters,” they have been researched.

In “Miss Sperry: Corporate Beauty Pageants and the Prizing of Femininity in Postwar America,” a peer-reviewed article by Stephen R. Patnode in the Long Island History Journal, the following is explained on why the defense contractor the Sperry Gyroscope Corporation held beauty pageants:

"Following the upheavals of World War II, managers and workers at Sperry re-segregated the workforce, categorizing some occupations as female and others as male. Beauty contests performed important cultural work in facilitating this shift smoothly by lionizing women that embodied domesticity, beauty, and cooperation."

Patnode also mentions that given the cultural attitude toward pageants, their inclusion in the workplace isn’t surprising. They were popular and by the late 1950s had hit their peak. Hundreds of pageants were being held across the country annually.

They were so prevalent that even the National Security Agency (NSA) had their own, dubbed the Miss NSA pageant. Contestants were female employees who represented numbers instead of states or teams. The pageant was held from the 1950s into the early 1960s.

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