| Sumario: | A foundational statement of the campaigns of the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1970s-1990s is 'The Personal is Political'. This article explores ways in which that statement was demonstrated at the beginnings of the Women's Liberation Movement in protests against requirements that women be, or aspire to be, beautiful. It provides accounts of three major protests against beauty contests in 1970: one in the United States, one in Australia and one in Britain. It provides a fourth account, this one of the first Women's Liberation conference in Australia, where beauty was still an issue. The article concludes first with an example of personal demands being placed firmly on the stage of world politics in 1975, but finally with present day examples of the stubborn and degrading persistence of the political dominance that still requires women to conform to masculinist definitions of personal beauty.
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