The Most Beautiful Girl in the World

Beauty Pageants and National Identity

Author: Sarah Banet-Weiser
ISBN: 9780520217911

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 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-W

Publisher: University of California Press
Publish Date: 1999

Subjects: Social Science / Gender Studies, Performing Arts / General

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Women's Center (Location: Body image)