The Press: The Bathing-Suit Issue

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Her future is a "horrible prospect," said she, but she hoped that her action might "dispel the false, absurd and dangerous notion that Catholics cannot speak for themselves." The speaker was Sue Simone Ingersoll, 20, Roman Catholic and New Mexico's entry in this week's Miss Universe Pageant, and she was explaining to reporters in Long Beach, Calif, why she was defying her archbishop by appearing in public bathing-suit exhibitions.

Albuquerque's Archbishop Edwin Vincent Byrne, who considers such contests indecent, had warned her (TIME, July 20) that if she took part in the pageant he would deny the sacraments to both her and her mother. In a "statement of conscience," redheaded Sue (37-24-36) described herself as "a symbol of one of the great problems in the country today," insisted that she was "in no way immoral." Then she put on a white bathing suit and posed for photographers.

Threatened with expulsion from Nebraska's Catholic Duchesne College unless she sticks to the no-bathing-suit ban, blonde Mary Jean Belitz, 18, last week gave up her Miss Omaha title. To Mary Jean's mother, the ban was bewildering: her pert (36-24-36) daughter had often appeared in the briefest drum-majorette costumes without causing church disfavor.