Paper Example on Beauty Pageants: Sites for Cultural Production & Contestation

Beauty pageants, whether on the local or global stage, are lively sites for the production and contestation of cultural meanings. They are fascinating cases for sociologists interested in revealing the processes of collective cultural production. Following the turn from the sociology of culture to 'cultural sociology' (Becker 1982), studies of popular culture have moved to focus not just on cultural objects or symbols as texts, but also to delve into the processes of their production. Beauty pageants are sites rich in both symbolism and cultural production and have much in common with other popular cultural production sites such as talk shows (Gamson 1998) cheerleading teams (Grindstaff and West 2006), and youth car modification (Best 2006). Through the rehearsals, judging and selection of beauty queens each year (often at cultural festivals), beauty pageants reveal processes that social groups go through in defining, debating and changing their cultural identities.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

The beauty queen is a person (typically a woman) chosen by a group of people to serve as a symbolic representation of their collective identity to a larger, often national, audience. Typically, beauty queens are chosen through beauty pageants or contests, which can vary by social context, setting, and judging criteria. During her reign, a beauty queen often makes symbolic appearances at public functions wearing a tiara (crown) and sash (often emblazoned with the title she holds and/or her sponsor's name), but she is shaped, selected and even produced within the social context of the institution of the beauty pageant.

In an early study of beauty pageants, Riverol (1992) traced the history of national identity in the Miss America Pageant, as mediated by television coverage, allowing members of the 'nation' a first chance to see their queen being chosen. Banet-Weiser (1999) analyses the Miss America pageant in relation to national, cultural, gender and racial rearticulation over time. Craig (2002) highlights the process of the emergence of counter-hegemonic, African American notions of beauty in response to mainstream white American understandings of beauty. Others examine the global impact of beauty pageants in different countries and in different settings; from the spread of the Miss Universe Pageant (modeled on the American format of beauty pageants) to the evolution of 'local' non pyramidal pageants that seem to operate almost in response to the widening of the American beauty pageant model (Cohen, Wilk and Stoeltje 1996). Many of these studies view beauty pageants as cultural forms that produce meanings of nation, ethnicity, race and gender. Most of the studies are based on the authors' experiences (either in person via television or through historical documents analyzed as texts) as audience members or viewers of the pageant.

However, beauty pageants are not only 'texts' to be read and analyzed, but also sites of action and interaction generating a process of cultural production that is deeply linked to claims to cultural authenticity, race, gender and identity. Beauty pageants are not only places where queens are chosen but where they are made. In this sense, beauty pageants can be seen as cultural forms of collective self identity as well as embodied production points of cultural identity. This two-sided approach is common to much of the current sociology of culture. For example, analysis of collective memory has been impacted by studies of embodiment. Spillman and Conway (2007) find though that many make "too sharp a distinction between incorporated or embodied memory and textual or discursive memory and ignore the complex relations between them...we need to theorize how bodily memories are always already inscribed, organized and symbolized" (p. 81). Beauty pageants lend themselves well as a case study to understanding the linkages between bodies and textual memories because they are at once about both embodied symbols and symbolic bodies, created and chosen through a process of inscription each year in the selection of the beauty queen. The beauty queen is more than just the actor performing a ritual of collective cultural identity, but also a "shared system of elective representations, observers/audiences, means of symbolic production, mis-en-scene, and social power" (Alexander 2004 as paraphrased in Spillman and Conway 2007:88).

The beauty pageant, while perhaps in decline in the industrialized world, is a growing cultural institution in diverse countries such as Nicaragua, the Philippines, Belize and Liberia. Interestingly, the format and the script of the pageant are amazingly similar across many different nations, cultures and societies (Cohen, Wilk and Stoeltje 1996). Most pageants have similar components: question and answer, interview, evening gown, traditional dress, and talent. Often the format of the judging criteria and the 'events' that make up the pageant - even the emcee performances - are arranged in a predictable and unchanging fashion. There are also similar cultural scripts that get enacted and invoked within the pageants such as 'it isn't about beauty, it's about culture' and 'I don't want to win, I just want to participate to serve the community.' Bodily practices like holding hands as the name of the winner is read, crying tears of joy (no tears of loss or disappointment allowed, it isn't lady like) are also highly homogeneous across many different social and cultural contexts. Even the audience has fairly predictable scripted behavior of cheering for their favorite, no booing, and appearing 'shocked and pleased' by the winner (King-O'Riain 2006).

This paper examines the growing literature on beauty pageants to better understand how culture is produced within the contexts of pageants. To do so, I look at beauty pageants as sites of commodification and consumption in a global world influenced by global markets and media institutions. I then examine how culture is produced in beauty pageants examining beauty pageants as sites of oppression, sites to articulate cultural agency, and sites of ethnic, gender, cultural and sexual identity production.

Producing Culture in Beauty Pageants

Beauty pageants are cultural expressions that take many forms, however, studies of pageants fall into the following four general areas: those that see the pageants as sites of increasing globalization, as sites of oppression, sites to articulate cultural agency, and sites of ethnic, gender, cultural and sexual identity production.

Pageants as sites of commodification and consumption in a global world

In the past, beauty pageants in the United States had global undertones to them as Miss America was often chosen to represent the 'nation' to the global world. Today however, even the most local beauty pageants are also increasingly commercialized by their position within the global beauty industry. Often beauty pageants are driven by transnational corporations across the globe trying to capture emerging markets in places like India and China with increasingly western notions of beauty driving their cosmetic campaigns.

The continued valorization of 'whiteness' or 'lightness' and European beauty standards seem to be impacting the Miss World and Miss Universe Pageants even with an increase in the proportion of women of color named as queens. Rondilla and Spickard (2007) tackle this when they ask, 'Is Lighter Better?' in relation to Asian American women and find that the answer is almost always 'yes'.

Ashikari (2005) likewise, studied whiteness in Japan and found a strong preference for light complexions in Japan with 'whitening' cosmetics sales on the rise. "White skin is not just class or obsession with the west, but a symbolic physical characteristic for identifying the Japanese people" (Ashikari 2005: 73). She finds that Japanese women do not use products with bleach, but see themselves as protecting white skin or recovering their 'innate' white tone.

Through the use of super high-tech whitening cosmetics, Japanese women are cultivating a Japanese form of whiteness which is based on the Japanese identity as a race, and, therefore, very different from - and even 'superior' to - western whiteness (Ashikari 2005:89).

Obsession with whiteness, and the cosmetic industry that will help achieve it, is not the only way that beauty queens are commodified. Even beauty queens in local pageants have sponsors from local businesses, but the real money is to be made on the global stage. A number of third world countries have recently hosted large international pageants both as a form of economic development (say of their tourist industry), but also as a way to make business contacts with the west.

The more recent Miss World and Miss Universe pageants have been held in developing countries: India, Namibia, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, to name a few. Whether or not the fact that the global beauty industry is now apparently recognizing black beauty will change the nature of the class and racial politics in Caribbean beauty pageants remains to be seen. However, given the intimate relationship between international beauty pageants and American corporate finance, it may be closer the mark to suggest that it is not racial progress per se that is changing the face of pageant winners but rather the strategic move to open Third World markets to First World business by embracing Third World nationalist symbols (Edmondson 2003:10-11).

These global tensions become clearer when Oza (2001) examines the local protests in India during the1996 Miss World pageant in Bangalore, India.

State and supporters of the pageant provided an international opportunity to 'showcase' new, liberalized India to the world. The pageant, therefore, was a site at which political protest and anxiety with 'globalization' as well as the opportunity to showcase India to the world were articulated (Oza 2001:1067).

The Miss World pageant was seen as iconic of global influences forcing their way into India. Local protesters didn't challenge the symbolism of the pageant itself, in terms of the agency of women, but instead protested the pageant as the impact of globalization and its attempt to threaten local culture.

When Trinidad and Tobago hosted the Miss Universe contest in 1999, there was little local protest because the region saw it as a form of prospective global economic development.

Seeking a chance to create economic opportunities for Trinidad by showcasing the country's rich cultural heritage, the government hoped to introduce the 'international' (that is, First World) audience to Trinidad as a desirable tourist destination. Also, the large and small business communities desired to make money from the event and to build business contacts with the likes of Donald Trump, who owns the Miss Universe franchise" (Edmondson 2003:13).

Similarly, "....The Miss Venezuela pageant is close to a national industry, a precious natural resource, like oil, to be developed and sold abroad for the enrichment of the nation" (Edmondson 2003:14). But this does little to challenge or change the 'white, western' notions of beauty in the pageant. In fact, both India and Venezuela have recently sent taller, more western looking women forward to international pageants because they want a queen that will win on the global stage.

But viewing beauty pageants only in terms of the contexts in which they take place, as a product consumed and viewed by audiences is only one part of the production process. One must also consider the backstage production side of them as well. When you get backstage, for long periods of time, you see that beauty pageants are contrived performances, like many others, that take much practice and effort to make them appear natural and free flowing.

Pageants as sites of oppression

Beauty pageants have been seen by many scholars as 'low brow'...