The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National IdentitySarah Banet-Weiser complicates the standard feminist take on beauty pageants in this intriguing look at a hotly contested but enduringly popular American ritual. She focuses on the Miss America pageant in particular, considering its claim to be an accurate representation of the diversity of contemporary American women. Exploring the cultural constructions and legitimations that go on during the long process of the pageant, Banet-Weiser depicts the beauty pageant stage as a place where concerns about national identity, cultural hopes and desires, and anxieties about race and gender are crystallized and condensed. The beauty pageant, she convincingly demonstrates, is a profoundly political arena deserving of serious study. Drawing on cultural criticism, ethnographic research, and interviews with pageant participants and officials, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World illustrates how contestants invent and reinvent themselves while articulating the female body as a national body. Banet-Weiser finds that most pageants are characterized by the ambivalence of contemporary "liberal" feminism, which encourages individual achievement, self-determination, and civic responsibility, while simultaneously promoting very conventional notions of beauty. The book explores the many different aspects of the Miss America pageant, including the swimsuit, the interview, and the talent competitions. It also takes a closer look at some extraordinary Miss Americas, such as Bess Myerson, the first Jewish Miss America; Vanessa Williams, the first African American Miss America; and Heather Whitestone, the first Miss America with a disability. Sarah Banet-Weiser complicates the standard feminist take on beauty pageants in this intriguing look at a hotly contested but enduringly popular American ritual. She focuses on the Miss America pageant in particular, considering its claim to be an accurat |
Contents
| 1 | |
A Certain Class of Girl Respectability and the Structure of the Miss America Pageant | 31 |
Anatomy of a Beauty Pageant The Swimsuit Competition | 58 |
If You Were a Color What Color Would You Be? The Interview and Talent Competitions in the Miss America Pageant | 87 |
Bodies of Difference Race Nation and the Troubled Reign of Vanessa Williams | 123 |
The Representation Politics of Whiteness and the National Body | 153 |
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African American argues asked Atlantic City audience beauty pageant beauty pageant contestants Bess Myerson bikini contests black contestants Black Miss America black women chapter claim color constituted construction contestant's crowned Deford difference disciplinary practices discipline discourse display diversity dominant ethnic event female body feminine body Feminism feminist focus gender girls Heather Whitestone historical Ibid ica pageant ideal imagined community individual international pageants interview competition judges kind liberal middlebrow Miss Amer Miss America contestants Miss America pageant Miss California Miss Lebanon Miss Universe Miss Universe pageant Miss USA Miss World moral multicultural national identity Nationalism and Sexuality nationalist norms pageant stage participate particular performance photographs political position produced questions race racial racism representation representative San Diego scholarship situated social society specific spectacle story swimsuit competition talent competition television tensions testants tion U.S. culture Vanessa Williams Whitney Houston Williams's woman womanhood York