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Beauty Queens: Gender, Ethnicity, and Transnational Modernities at the Miss India USA Pageant

Beauty Queens: Gender, Ethnicity, and Transnational Modernities at the Miss India USA Pageant Beauty Queens: Gender, Ethnicity, and Transnational Modernities at the Miss India USA Pageant Bakirathi Mani At the 1999 Miss India USA pageant, held in San Jose, California, more than six hundred people streamed into the ballroom of the five-star Fairmont Hotel. Billed in the pageant booklet as an event of “great social and cultural value” and as “the most glamorous Indian function in the country,”1 tickets to Miss India USA quickly sold out to a maximum capacity audience. Family and friends of the contestants, local businesspeople, community leaders, and pageant enthusiasts milled around their assigned tables and the cash bar, and the pageant commenced after an hour’s delay. Stretching well past midnight, the eighteenth annual Miss India USA pageant was a five-hourlong extravaganza, constituted through appearances by the young female contestants for the crown as well as fashion shows, music and dance performances, a three-course dinner, and seemingly endless speeches by former beauty queens, local civic officials, and Indian American community leaders. Sponsored by the New York – based India Festival Committee, the Miss positions 14:3 doi 10.1215/10679847-2006-019 Copyright 2006 by Duke University Press positions 14:3 Winter 2006 India USA pageant is a gala event, the nationwide culmination http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png positions asia critique Duke University Press

Beauty Queens: Gender, Ethnicity, and Transnational Modernities at the Miss India USA Pageant

Mani, Bakirathi
positions asia critique , Volume 14 (3) – Dec 1, 2006
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
© 2006 by Duke University Press
ISSN
1067-9847
eISSN
1067-9847
DOI
10.1215/10679847-2006-019
Publisher site
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Abstract

Beauty Queens: Gender, Ethnicity, and Transnational Modernities at the Miss India USA Pageant Bakirathi Mani At the 1999 Miss India USA pageant, held in San Jose, California, more than six hundred people streamed into the ballroom of the five-star Fairmont Hotel. Billed in the pageant booklet as an event of “great social and cultural value” and as “the most glamorous Indian function in the country,”1 tickets to Miss India USA quickly sold out to a maximum capacity audience. Family and friends of the contestants, local businesspeople, community leaders, and pageant enthusiasts milled around their assigned tables and the cash bar, and the pageant commenced after an hour’s delay. Stretching well past midnight, the eighteenth annual Miss India USA pageant was a five-hourlong extravaganza, constituted through appearances by the young female contestants for the crown as well as fashion shows, music and dance performances, a three-course dinner, and seemingly endless speeches by former beauty queens, local civic officials, and Indian American community leaders. Sponsored by the New York – based India Festival Committee, the Miss positions 14:3 doi 10.1215/10679847-2006-019 Copyright 2006 by Duke University Press positions 14:3 Winter 2006 India USA pageant is a gala event, the nationwide culmination

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positions asia critique – Duke University Press

Published: Dec 1, 2006

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