Making Miss Diva : idealizing femininity and new embodied nationalism in India

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Publisher

Routledge

Abstract

This paper summarizes a narrative-based account of a beauty pageant in India that highlights gender-liminal representations and identities. The title of the pageant – Miss Diva – suggests the internationalization of beauty, body and aesthetics. This essay has three major aims: 1) to reveal the primacy of sexuality over gender that corresponds to gender pluralism and varied gender transgressive politics within the imperative of embodied desires; 2) to discuss the ‘local’ commercial conditions and how gender-liminal subjectivities are patterned within modernity’s commodified cultural representation which is pluralistic in nature; and 3) to envision beauty and representational politics within the vocabulary of the nation-based identity. This paper provides an account of the complex interconnections between the modern nation and its gender(ed) subjectivities, maintaining a balance between global/local standards.

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Keywords

Body and embodiment, Capital, Beauty pageants, Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, Globalization, India

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG-05: Gender equality

Citation

Ahonaa Roy (2024) Making Miss Diva: Idealizing femininity and new embodied nationalism in India, South Asian Popular Culture, 22:2, 321-332, DOI: 10.1080/14746689.2024.2437430.