![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/615\/2018\/07\/MissFourth-300x224.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI begin with two facts:<\/p>\n
In 1983, when I was 12, I was named Miss Fourth of July in a parade in my grandmother\u2019s neighborhood in a small, historic town in North Carolina.<\/p>\n
After the Civil War, virulent racists in government invoked the image of the purity and innocence of white womanhood as reason for stripping African Americans of their rights as citizens, fomenting sexualized racial anxiety and calling for control of \u201csavage\u201d blackness in the name of \u201cour women.\u201d<\/p>\n
How are these facts related?\u00a0 Why am I thinking about them today?<\/p>\n
My usual personal narrative around my reign as Miss Fourth of July has more akin to the 1989 movie Miss Firecracker\u00a0<\/em>with Holly Hunter, in which a scrappy orphan tries to win out against the more genteel elements in her southern town, though in my case the waifish orphan actually won the title.\u00a0 And in my case, \u00a0it wasn\u2019t a beauty pageant, just me rollerskating around the neighborhood in a children\u2019s parade. \u00a0And I wasn\u2019t trying to win anything.\u00a0 I just wanted to be part of the gang.<\/p>\nBut I\u2019m thinking this year of the costs of celebrating white girlhood, white womanhood.\u00a0I was a cute kid, ok?\u00a0 When I was little, I thought I was the Sunbeam bread girl\u2014a pretty little white girl in a large ad on the side of a building in Salisbury, NC with upswept blond hair, eating a piece of white bread with butter.\u00a0 My uncle told me that was me.\u00a0 (It turns out the model for the ad was an aunt of someone I later went to grad school with in Philadelphia.)\u00a0And despite some murky mystery surrounding my origins, my mother\u2019s side of the family always went out of their way to let me know I was part of the gang, and that our family had something special, despite it all.\u00a0 Some sparkle, some wit.\u00a0 Yes, even beauty.<\/p>\n
But being a scrappy Miss Fourth of July only gets you so far.\u00a0 What boundaries do you agree to stay within when you accept the title? And celebrations of the little blond girl as icon are sadly problematic, as Toni Morrison so profoundly explores in The Bluest Eye<\/em>.\u00a0 My memory of the event and my joke of posting my certificate on Facebook every Fourth is tainted now by a cultural climate in which the rhetoric of \u201cour women\u201d as being worthy of protection against invading dark-skinned criminals is once again being spouted by those in even the highest office.<\/p>\nThe kind adults in my grandmother\u2019s neighborhood in 1983 who looked at a scrappy kid who spent a lot of time at her grandmother\u2019s house and decided to give her a certificate for adding some cheer to a national holiday \u2026 they weren\u2019t thinking of The Bluest Eye\u00a0<\/em>or of issues of \u201cnational purity\u201d and psychosexual anxiety.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t.\u00a0 They were being nice.\u00a0 But right now, white women need to take every opportunity to say, \u201cI stand with other women.\u00a0I stand with the dignity of all human beings.\u00a0 Not in my name. Never again in my name.\u201d<\/p>\nJoanna Penn Cooper<\/a> is a poet and essayist and author of The Itinerant Girl\u2019s Guide<\/em> to Self-Hypnosis and What Is a Domicile<\/em>. \u00a0She\u00a0curates the \u201cApproaching Mystery\u201d series for Sick Pilgrim, publishing flash essays by writers\u00a0encountering the unseen, the uncanny, and the unresolvable. \u00a0She lives in Durham, NC.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I begin with two facts: In 1983, when I was 12, I was named Miss Fourth of July in a parade in my grandmother\u2019s neighborhood in a small, historic town in North Carolina. After the Civil War, virulent racists in government invoked the image of the purity and innocence of white womanhood as reason for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3101,"featured_media":7177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2947,2938,2929,2935,2941,2932,2944],"class_list":["post-7174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bluest-eye","tag-civil-war","tag-fourth-of-july","tag-holly-hunter","tag-independence-day","tag-miss-firecracker","tag-toni-morrison"],"yoast_head":"\n
Miss Fourth of July by Joanna Penn Cooper<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I begin with two facts: In 1983, when I was 12, I was named Miss Fourth of July in a parade in my grandmother\u2019s neighborhood in a small, historic town in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/2018\/07\/miss-fourth-of-july-by-joanna-penn-cooper\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Miss Fourth of July by Joanna Penn Cooper\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I begin with two facts: In 1983, when I was 12, I was named Miss Fourth of July in a parade in my grandmother\u2019s neighborhood in a small, historic town in\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/2018\/07\/miss-fourth-of-july-by-joanna-penn-cooper\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sick Pilgrim\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-07-04T14:21:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-07-04T14:36:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/615\/2018\/07\/MissFourth.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"537\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Joanna Penn Cooper\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Joanna Penn Cooper\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/2018\/07\/miss-fourth-of-july-by-joanna-penn-cooper\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/2018\/07\/miss-fourth-of-july-by-joanna-penn-cooper\/\",\"name\":\"Miss Fourth of July by Joanna Penn Cooper\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2018-07-04T14:21:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-07-04T14:36:43+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/#\/schema\/person\/2611f7910125afaf766ff1f23a021df8\"},\"description\":\"I begin with two facts: In 1983, when I was 12, I was named Miss Fourth of July in a parade in my grandmother\u2019s neighborhood in a small, historic town in\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/2018\/07\/miss-fourth-of-july-by-joanna-penn-cooper\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/2018\/07\/miss-fourth-of-july-by-joanna-penn-cooper\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/2018\/07\/miss-fourth-of-july-by-joanna-penn-cooper\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Miss Fourth of July by Joanna Penn Cooper\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/\",\"name\":\"Sick Pilgrim\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/#\/schema\/person\/2611f7910125afaf766ff1f23a021df8\",\"name\":\"Joanna Penn Cooper\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/54931b09a7cf2790988cf495641cfa1f?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/54931b09a7cf2790988cf495641cfa1f?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Joanna Penn Cooper\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/author\/jpcooper\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Miss Fourth of July by Joanna Penn Cooper","description":"I begin with two facts: In 1983, when I was 12, I was named Miss Fourth of July in a parade in my grandmother\u2019s neighborhood in a small, historic town in","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/2018\/07\/miss-fourth-of-july-by-joanna-penn-cooper\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Miss Fourth of July by Joanna Penn Cooper","og_description":"I begin with two facts: In 1983, when I was 12, I was named Miss Fourth of July in a parade in my grandmother\u2019s neighborhood in a small, historic town in","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/2018\/07\/miss-fourth-of-july-by-joanna-penn-cooper\/","og_site_name":"Sick Pilgrim","article_published_time":"2018-07-04T14:21:56+00:00","article_modified_time":"2018-07-04T14:36:43+00:00","og_image":[{"width":720,"height":537,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/615\/2018\/07\/MissFourth.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Joanna Penn Cooper","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Joanna Penn Cooper","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/2018\/07\/miss-fourth-of-july-by-joanna-penn-cooper\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/2018\/07\/miss-fourth-of-july-by-joanna-penn-cooper\/","name":"Miss Fourth of July by Joanna Penn Cooper","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/#website"},"datePublished":"2018-07-04T14:21:56+00:00","dateModified":"2018-07-04T14:36:43+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/#\/schema\/person\/2611f7910125afaf766ff1f23a021df8"},"description":"I begin with two facts: In 1983, when I was 12, I was named Miss Fourth of July in a parade in my grandmother\u2019s neighborhood in a small, historic town in","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/2018\/07\/miss-fourth-of-july-by-joanna-penn-cooper\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/2018\/07\/miss-fourth-of-july-by-joanna-penn-cooper\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/2018\/07\/miss-fourth-of-july-by-joanna-penn-cooper\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Miss Fourth of July by Joanna Penn Cooper"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/","name":"Sick Pilgrim","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/#\/schema\/person\/2611f7910125afaf766ff1f23a021df8","name":"Joanna Penn Cooper","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/54931b09a7cf2790988cf495641cfa1f?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/54931b09a7cf2790988cf495641cfa1f?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","caption":"Joanna Penn Cooper"},"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/author\/jpcooper\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sickpilgrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/615\/2018\/07\/MissFourth.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n