Embodied Nationalism and Aesthetic Labor in Nigerian Beauty Pageants

• In Event: 318 - Section on Body and Embodiment Paper Session. The Body Politic: Law, Nationalism, and the State

Abstract

This paper engages with the woman-body-nation literature through the case of Nigerian beauty pageant contests. I show how contestants employ aesthetic labor to purse broader nationalist agendas. Through their bodies, specifically their voices, walks, and smiles, they view themselves as public figures—representatives of “ordinary people,”—who because of their celebrity, have access to elites who they can lobby to promote their concerns in the national arena through a “beauty diplomacy” narrative which stresses charity, social development, and goodwill. I discuss how beauty contestants distinguish themselves from other women in similar entertainment industries where the body is also heavily implicated. For instance, beauty pageant contestants chided models (even while some of them pursued modeling careers themselves) as merely “hangers,” “fine book covers without content,” and “faceless.” In contrast, beauty contestants viewed their own positions to be that of cultural ambassadors who could use their beauty, charm and hospitality to advocate for social programs in Nigeria and maintain ties to other countries around the world. I detail the distinct embodied strategies used by contestants in two different national pageants held in Nigeria. While participants in both worked to manage, perform, and embody national representation, one took an approach I call tactile, which focused on rootedness, familiarity and presumed tacit cultural knowledge and the other used a tactical approach, focused on strategy, discovery and cosmopolitan worldviews. These divergent approaches were evident through differences in dress, dance movements, and speech patterns which highlights the intricate “body work” involved in gendered national representations.

Author

• Oluwakemi M. Balogun, University of Oregon