Global Media Events in India: Contests over Beauty, Gender and Nation

Abstract

This monograph focuses on perceptions of televised global beauty pageants among business and media professionals in India who organized, sponsored, and supported the Miss World beauty contest. The 1996 Miss World pageant, which was held in Bangalore, a cosmopolitan city in South India, proved to be highly controversial due to protests expressed against the pageant by religious leaders, conservative women's groups, feminist activists, and political parties. My analysis of discourses on Miss World that circulated among professionals in the Indian culture industry is based on data gathered from ethnographic fieldwork in Mumbai and Bangalore. Informants' statements about the televised Miss World revealed that categories of nation and gender deeply influenced local producers' interpretations of the benefits that accrue to India through the practice of hosting global media events. In selecting a logo for Miss World, organizers and sponsors had to carefully negotiate local religious and gender politics as well as global fashion and beauty standards. Organizers' motives in holding the pageant in India demonstrated the launching of new configurations of global cultural flows that highlight Third World culture industries' desires to manage and control their own projects of globalization. The study shows that the selection of a venue for Miss World was shaped by struggles to challenge regional hierarchies within India. In conclusion, I consider the implications of this qualitative research on local producers' interpretations of Miss World for studies of media globalization, nationalism, and gender.