A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.
Two escaped convicts roll into the village of Happy, Texas, where they're mistaken for a gay couple who work as beauty pageant consultants. They go along with it to duck the police, but the local sheriff has a secret of his own.
When the local FBI office receives a letter from a terrorist known only as 'The Citizen', it's quickly determined that he's planning his next act at the Miss America beauty pageant. Because tough-as-nails Gracie Hart is the only female Agent at the office, she's chosen to go undercover as the contestant from New Jersey.
A lost film - Mary Gray, whose father manufactures cold cream, is engaged to sappy Horace Niles, the son of Hugo Niles, the elder Gray's most competitive rival in the cosmetics business. Chip Armstrong, a hot-shot public relations man, quits the employ of Hugo Niles and goes to work for Gray, persuading Mary to enter the Miss America contest at Atlantic City, with the intention of using her to endorse her father's cold cream should she win. Mary breaks her engagement with Horace. When it appears that she will win the contest, Hugo lures her home on the pretext that her father is ill, and she misses the contest. Chip and Mary return to Atlantic City, discovering that the new Miss America has told the world that she owes all her success to Gray's cold cream. On this note, Chip and Mary decide to get married.
In a small Minnesota town, the annual beauty pageant is being covered by a TV crew. Former winner Gladys Leeman wants to make sure her daughter follows in her footsteps; explosions, falling lights, and trailer fires prove that. As the Leemans are the richest family in town, the police are pretty relaxed about it all. Despite everything, main rival (but sweet) Amber Atkins won't give up without a fight.
To prove a point about measuring up and fitting in, Texas teen Willowdean “Dumplin’” Dickson enters a local pageant run by her ex-beauty queen mom.
Local councillor Sidney Fiddler persuades the Mayor to help improve the image of their rundown seaside town by holding a beauty contest. But formidable Councillor Prodworthy, head of the local women's liberation movement, has other ideas. It's open warfare as the women's lib attempt to sabotage the contest.
A struggling Hollywood actress is dragged by her agent to judge a beauty pageant in a nudist colony.
It's time again for California's "Young American Miss" beauty pageant, the biggest event of the year for Big Bob Freelander and Brenda DiCarlo, who give their all to put on a successful pageant. But Brenda is having marital difficulties and Bob's son is up to some mischief. Could this year's pageant be in jeopardy?
Carnelle Scott is a restless Mississippi girl looking for a life change. She decides to enter a beauty pageant, which her cousin had won years before. Despite a lack of support from those close to her Carnelle remains determined. She enlists the help of a seamstress to outfit her for the competition, while rebuffing the advances of predatory men, as she aims to bring home the crown.
Lily is a winner, but when her boyfriend leaves her for a vapid beauty pageant queen, she gets the notion that winning the Miss India America title would bring him back. Since Lily is perfect in everything else she does, it should be a cinch...or so she thinks. The pageant world isn't just pretty smiles and high heels, and her main competition, Sonia, gives her a run for her money.
Fresh out of prison after drugging the matcha latte of her pageant competition, a young and accomplished beauty queen is on the hunt for her ex-boyfriend upon discovering he's robbed her home.
Due to an urgent need of money, aspiring writer Agnes participates in an amateur striptease contest. Her new boyfriend, Daniel, who is a reporter by profession, covers the contest for his magazine.
To increase sales of the magazine Veckohatten, the management decides to invest heavily in the beauty contest Miss Sweden. A communist cell is planning to sabotage the competition, because it is sexist.
Thirty girls arrive in a seaside town to participate in a beauty contest. Marina has no ambitions of victory: she only wants to have the sewing machine promised to each participant.
A former pageant queen embarks on an all-night adventure with four unlikely friends she meets at a women's shelter.
A group of hapless friends stumble into a plot involving mobsters, bounty hunters, beauty queens, and stolen jewels.
Poor Ella Cinders is much abused by her evil step-mother and step-sisters. When she wins a local beauty contest she jumps at the chance to get out of her dead-end life and go to Hollywood, where she is promised a job in the movies. When she arrives in Hollywood, she discovers that the contest was a scam and the job non-existent. But through pluck, luck, and talent, she makes it in the movies anyway, and finds true love.
Three gangsters smuggle a microfilm with passport data from West Germany to their buyer from Middle East, which happens to be crucial thing for the security of European Community. On their way through Yugoslavia, they try to hide the microfilm in the Miss Universum's purse who pays visit to the country at its national beauty contest. The problems arise when the microfilm accidentally finds itself in the possession of one of the competitors, unbeknown-st to her. The criminals try to get in possession of the microfilm, however a brave journalist who came because of the contest prevents them of doing so.
Marjory Clark wins a competition in her Midland town and finds herself in a Festival of Britain procession as Lady Godiva - though not in the buff. This leads by way of a suspect beauty competition to the show-business world of London. But it could be a slippery slope for simple home-town Marge.