ABSTRACT
A popular and ubiquitous class of ritual events in which women compete for a fictive royal title, princess or queen, beauty pageants occur on an annual basis in small villages and large cities around the globe. From the Snake Charmer Queen beauty contest, held at the Rattlesnake RoundUp in Sweetwater, Texas, to the Miss Ghana competition, a national event described by one critic as exhibiting "earmarks of Euro-cultural chauvinism," these events attract wide and passionate participation wherever they occur.! The Indy "500" automobile race of Indianapolis, Indiana, is graced with a queen, four members of her court and thirtythree princesses, while just fifty miles away in the university town of Bloomington, the Slum Goddess Pageant provides the stage for drag queens to compete in a contest suffused with "dramatic irony," exemplified by the name of the 1994 winner, Feramona. 2
The International Directory of Pageants claims data on over 3000 beauty pageants worldwide. An index of its popularity, these numbers also point to the ease with which the beauty contest can be replicated. A defining feature of popular culture, replication depends on two essential features: a form (1) that can be easily reproduced and recognized and (2) that is easily adapted to local meanings and familiar symbols, values, and aesthetics-those relevant to the producers, performers, and consumers of the contest. Communities, industries, ethnic groups, cities, states, and nations find such a form attractive because it not only involves the local population, but it creates links to other communities and to hierarchies of such events in larger venues (Stoeltje and Bauman 1989).
