The photo above shows Liane Chu in the top right corner of the brochure for the 1965 Miss Chinatown USA pageant in San Francisco.
For the pageant Liane took on the straight-laced and traditionally feminine style of dress that her mother’s generation expected of women. According to Liane, being crowned Miss Chinatown in San Francisco “was kinda like being a hippie but doing this straight role.” Despite being a self-described “politico,” she was happy to do this for her mother, and was rewarded scholarship money for her participation. She ended up enjoying the experience immensely; she was able to travel to small towns all over California and even to a Chinatown in Hawaii.
As a contestant for Miss Chinatown USA, Liane was dressed, groomed and made up in a way that her Berkeley peers would never have seen. While living in Berkeley and working at the Red Dress shop from 1966 to 1969, her go-to outfit was “a little slip dress” that “you could throw on anytime”; she wore no makeup, and went barefoot. By contrast, Liane grew up in a Chinese household in San Francisco with certain expectations for how women would dress: “ the nylons, the garter belts, the girdles.”
The relaxed and casual style of dress of Berkeley students incited very different reactions in a young and curious Liane and in her parents. Recounting her visit to Cal as a soon-to-be student, Liane remembered “[her] dad and mom were like ‘look at those people’—they wore sandals,” with disdain, while she thought to herself “Oh, I find them attractive!”