Global Queens, National Celebrities: Tales of Feminine Triumph in Post-Liberalization India

This paper’s analysis of print media texts about India’s six Miss World and Miss Universe title-holders maps the cultural production of the global beauty queen as an emerging hero whose tale of ascent circulates in a nation that is renegotiating its marginal position in the global economy. News and magazine texts celebrate global beauty queens’ bodily discipline and devotion to fitness and grooming programs as evidence of the meritorious hard work of committed professionals. Popular biographies construct beauty queens as humble and ordinary women, who have struggled to overcome adversities in their pursuit of global fame. Media accounts navigate the boundaries between modernity and tradition when they represent beauty queens as hybrid—wholesome, patriotic, and cosmopolitan—young women, who preserve their authentic national identities despite their success in the global arena. Unpacking the mythical tales of class, gender, and national ascent that are smuggled into the public profiling of the global beauty queen, I argue that such representations of feminine agency in popular print culture authorize the ideological interests of India’s consuming classes.