The Contentious Politics of Global Beauty Pageants, Neoliberalism, and Feminism

• In Event: Beauty Politics: Identity, Femininity, and Ideology

Abstract

The profitability and elasticity of beauty pageants has resulted in a proliferation of beauty contests across a variety of scales and media genres, thus intensifying pressures for remaking and improving bodies and subjectivities. At the same time, beauty pageants continue to be combat zones and sites of feminist protest and praxis. This paper analyzes the corporate and neoliberal rebranding and marketing of beauty pageants as opportunities for gendered empowerment and global, racial, and cultural inclusivity. It also considers the protests, frictions, and the divergent ways that some contestants have sought to resignify pageants to advance communal, activist, and oppositional agendas.

Presenter

• Karen W. Tice, University of Kentucky