Making Miss India Miss World : Constructing Gender, Power, and the Nation in Postliberalization India

Susan Dewey
Syracuse University Press
 9780815631767
0-8156-3176-6

For almost half a century, the Miss India competition has been aprominent feature of Indian popular culture, influencing, over time, the conventional standard for female beauty. As India participatesincreasingly.

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in a global economy, that standard is gradually beingshaped by forces beyond the country's borders. Through the unexpectedlens of a participant in the 2003 beauty pageant, SusanDewey's Making Miss India Miss World examines what feminine beautyhas come to mean in a country transformed by recent political, economic, and cultural developments.Dewey offers readers an up-close view of the beauty pageantprocess concentrating on the intense trainng program undergone bycontestants and involving extensive physical, emotional, and culturaltransformations. Covering everything from proper table etiquette topreferred skin tone, the author reveals the exacting standards set bypageant officials and reflected in Indian society. Yet she also recognizesthe empowerment these women are afforded by their status asbeauty symbols in a culture increasingly shaped by the visual influenceof national and international media.Making Miss India Miss World constitutes an important cultural critiqueand an enlightening take on how macroeconomic changeaffects cultural identity at the individual level.