Roy, Ahonaa2025-07-042024Ahonaa Roy (2024) Making Miss Diva: Idealizing femininity and new embodied nationalism in India, South Asian Popular Culture, 22:2, 321-332, DOI: 10.1080/14746689.2024.2437430.1474-6689 (print)1474-6697 (online)10.1080/14746689.2024.2437430http://hdl.handle.net/2263/103188This 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.en© 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an electronic version of an article published in South Asian Popular Culture, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 321-332, 2024. doi : 10.1080/14746689.2024.2437430. South Asian Popular Culture is available online at : https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rsap20.Body and embodimentCapitalBeauty pageantsCosmopolitanismNationalismGlobalizationIndiaPostprint Article