Beauty Pageants: On Ideal Womanhood and Contested Identities

For over a century, beauty pageants have been a complicated and contested celebration of national identity. From the launch of Miss America in 1921 to Miss World (1951) and Miss Universe (1952), race, class, faith, fashion, and gender identity have all played a crucial role in the evolution of pageantry internationally.

Through her lecture ‘Beauty Pageants and National Identity’, Margot Mifflin will identify how, modeled on Miss America, other U.S. pageants sprang up as regional expressions of cultural pride, such as Miss Chinatown USA, Miss America Latina, and Miss Navajo Nation--which requires speaking Navajo and butchering a sheep. Mifflin will discuss the rise in beauty contests that were launched in reaction to Miss America’s persistent racism, such as Miss Black America (1968), and pageants honoring trans-global identities, such as Miss World Muslimah. Pageants have both empowered and damaged women and introduced subversive winners who used their titles for political purposes. As such, the lecture will also spotlight gay and trans contestants who are changing the pageant world internationally, even as the newly minted “Miss AI” competition reinforces, through artificial intelligence, a stereotypical ideal womanhood.

We are committed to making our sessions as accessible as possible. If you are unable to pay the full amount for this class, please reach out to us via email at [email protected] and we will provide you with a discount code.