ABSTRACT
Transvestite beauty contests are by all accounts an emergent and growing phenomenon in mainland and insular Southeast Asia and the Pacific (Mageo 1992; Van Esterik this volume), and are ubiquitous throughout most of the Philippines (Cannel 1992; Whitham 1992). In this paper I am concerned with the meaning of the gay or bantut beauty contests in the context of the Muslim Tausug and Sarna communities of Zamboanga City and J 010 in the Southern Philippines. In particular I shall focus on the way in which the gaylbantut contestants symbolically mediate for local communities the appropriation of a desirable yet potentially threatening global cultural other, and have become central to the ongoing negotiation and constitution of an inviolable Muslim identity.
