ABSTRACT
In her speech at the end of Miss Congeniality (Donald Petrie, 2000), Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock), an undercover FBI agent, says, “[F]or me, this experience [participating in the Miss United States beauty pageant] has been one of the most rewarding and liberating of my life.” 1 In her discussion of the film, Linda Mizejewski dismisses this statement with sarcasm: “[I]t’s tough to figure out what these young women have been ‘liberated’ from, except feminism, intellectualism, and ugliness.” 2 Mizejewski recreates the binary chain in which ugly, smart, and feminist are opposed to pretty, stupid, and antifeminist; however, Mizejewski ignores the fact that Miss Congeniality breaks these binary oppositions. Rather than simply dismissing Hart’s claim on the face of it, we must ask: what is Hart liberated from? What does this new-found femininity offer her? And if this femininity is not simply a repudiation of feminism, how is it positioned with regard to feminism?
