Miss America By Day Analysis

In Miss America By Day, Marilyn Van Derbur told her story of incest, that she experienced throughout her childhood. She explained how she was sexually abused by her father, from age 5 to the time she was 18 years old, when she was able to leave her home and go off to college. Marilyn wrote about how her father would come into her room, at least once a week, to molest or rape her. The visits became more frequent when she was a teenager. She would lie awake in her bed, curled up in a tight fetal position, anticipating when he would come into her room and violate her. When he would come in at night, she would pretend she was sleeping throughout the whole defilement. The waiting was very traumatic for her on its own, because even if he didn’t come in a particular night, she still wouldn’t be able to go to sleep or relax her body from the fear of his next “visit.”
This trauma was something she would have to deal with for a big part of her life. While in her recovery process, she would have to learn how to let go of the fear of someone coming into her room and touching her while she was sleeping; and also learn how to sleep with the door unlocked, and even eventually with it open. The physical pain she would develop in her childhood would last a lifetime, from curling up
After winning, she made many appearances during the year she was named Miss America. During this time, she began speaking to the crowds who came to see her. This opened the door to her career as a motivational speaker. Marilyn became a motivational speaker in her early 20’s. She craved the fears and anxiety of the challenging career she was seeking after. It was like an adrenaline rush for her. She had experienced those feelings so much in her life, that she wanted to feel them without even realizing that she was doing that to herself. She became very successful in her speaking and encouraged a lot of people to pursue a career and spoke about how to be