Abstract

Since its emergence, beauty pageantry as a cultural even and entertainment programme has been predominantly characterized as controversial and an unwelcome social venture. Scholars like Cohen, Wilk and Stoeltje (1996) reiterate this by arguing that beauty pageants have become sites of controversy and resistance. In Ghana, most of these controversies take the form of audience uproar and outburst on social media, especially at the end of the contest when expectations are not met. Following the excessive amount of data social media generates on the beauty contest, it has become all-important for researchers to focus our attention on interrogating the posts shared by audiences as well as the emotions seeded in them. The study, therefore, examines social media posts of audiences on an indigenous beauty pageant in Ghana, Ghana’s Most Beautiful (GMB). The paper adopts the Reader-Response theory, Philosophical Hermeneutics and Ekman and Friesen's six basic emotions to interrogate Facebook users’ posts on the coronation of the 2017 and 2018 beauty Queens, Zeinab and Abena. Using qualitative content analysis, cyber ethnographic and thematic analysis of several purposively sampled Facebook posts, the study revealed that through emotional outpour of anger, disgust, sadness, surprise, and happiness, audience raised contemptuous and social issues such as corruption, aspersions, signification/ethnocentrism, and objectification. Withal, they also highlighted issues like glorification, and divination. Again, the study found that the beauty queens, through users’ posts were represented as commodities, assertive, purposeful, heroic and intelligent. The study concludes that organizers of GMB re-consider a total restructuring of the pageant into one that embraces cultural differences devoid of commodification and oppression of women. Keywords: Ghana’s Most Beautiful, Beauty pageants, audience emotions, emotional display, social media DOI: 10.7176/NMMC/97-05 Publication date: August 31 st 2021

Highlights

  • Beauty pageants are global phenomenon and in recent times have become increasingly popular with hundreds of spectators ranging from small local groups to large television audiences (Crawford, et al, 2008)

  • Findings and Discussion Results from the data collected from the social media platform-Facebook- were used to generate thematic categorizations of the dominant issues that emerged from the posts shared between 2017 and 2018

  • The beauty and bodies of the women in this contest become the main project in capitalist consumerism, where the women are consumers and www.iiste.org at the same time embodiments of the idealized femininity that is consumed (Johansson, 1998). This goes to affirm the argument of critics that beauty pageantry objectifies women as symbols and women bodies are used to promote commercial goods (King-O’Riain, 2008)

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Summary

Introduction

Beauty pageants are global phenomenon and in recent times have become increasingly popular with hundreds of spectators ranging from small local groups to large television audiences (Crawford, et al, 2008). Reports show that Miss World Pageantry is held annually in 104 countries and it is the most watched annually televised event in the world (Crawford et al, 2008). This proliferation is partly attributed to its acceptance as a form of entertainment by many audiences across the globe (Banet-Weiser, 1999). Contestants of female beauty pageants are expected to engage in performances beyond their looks in order to come out as winners. Hamashima (2012) reiterate this when she avows that there has been a shift from beauty in the pageant competitions to a broader concentration on scholarship and education, cultural preservation, cultural awareness, gender equality, and health among others

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