ABSTRACT
While we were in the final stages of editing this book, we received a packet of newspaper clippings on beauty contests from one of our students doing ethnographic fieldwork in Thailand. The clippings were taken from international newspapers during a five-week period early in the summer of 1994, and their topics ranged from the involvement of the 1993 Miss World second runner-up in fixing the results of the Manila Film Festival to the run-away marketing success in the Philippines of photos of Miss Belgium's entry in the 1994 Miss Universe pageant and to the first Croatian men's beauty contest held, according to a photo caption, "while nearby Serb artillery shelled the Dubrovnik region." The New York Times articles on beauty contests and pageants! over the last twenty years show similar intriguing juxtapositions: The 1975 protests of the Miss Universe contest in El Salvador that were among "the most serious of the events that ... sharpened discontent with the Government of Col. Arturo Armando Monina among students, peasants, workers, landowners, the clergy and even the armed forces" (New York Times 1975); the 1984 revoking of Vanessa Williams' Miss America title, and the controversy sparked when one of her songs was played during the 1993 Miss America evening gown competition (New York Times 1993); the near-scuttling of the 1976 Miss World contest by contestants protesting South Africa's apartheid policies (New York Times 1976); and the 1993 announcement by the African National Conference of "intensive negotiations" with the sponsors of the Miss South Mrica contest resulting in "promises of a 'training fund' to groom future nonwhite beauty contest contestants" (Keller 1993).
