The Pageant Politic: Race and Representation in American Beauty Contests and Culture Público
Fisher, Danica Camille Tisdale (2012)
Abstract
Abstract
The Pageant Politic: Race and Representation in American Beauty
Contests and Culture
The beauty pageant stage has been considered an insignificant
space, void of any real or considerable meaning. From the bathing
beauty contests of the 1920's, to the most recognized and
consistent American beauty ritual--the Miss America Pageant--most
critical thought has assailed the triviality of beauty pageants.
Burgeoning critical treatments of beauty pageants have emerged in
an attempt by scholars to more carefully consider the cultural
production of these performative spaces and to illuminate the ways
in which meaning is produced through the presentation of "ideal"
bodies. This study focuses on the precarious position that
sociologist Maxine Leeds Craig believes bodies of difference
occupy--as objects of both ridicule and celebration--and considers
what happens when marginalized bodies enter traditional pageant
spaces as well as the ways in which the pageant model has been
subverted in particular instances to challenge exclusionary
representations of feminine ideals. This study works to suggest an
understanding of the pageant model as an active space for the
production of cultural meaning, and illuminates its use as a tool
to dismantle exclusionary definitions of true womanhood while
remaining critical of the ability of such models to be completely
and universally subversive or transformative. This project does not
argue against the inherent racism and sexism of beauty pageants,
but complicates the matter in ways that encourage scholars of
beauty, the body, and popular culture to reconceptualize the
pageant stage and consider how the model has, at times, been turned
on its head by marginalized communities in order to challenge and
redefine notions of the body beautiful.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
Introduction...1
Chapter 1...15
Chapter 2...48
Chapter 3...84
Chapter 4...116
Works Cited...154
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