Making Miss India Miss World: Constructing Gender, Power, and the Nation in Postliberalization India (Gender and Globalization)

Dewey, Susan

ISBN 10: 0815631766 / ISBN 13: 9780815631767

Published by Syracuse University Press, 2008

About this Item

Befriedigend/Good: Durchschnittlich erhaltenes Buch bzw. Schutzumschlag mit Gebrauchsspuren, aber vollständigen Seiten. / Describes the average WORN book or dust jacket that has all the pages present.

Seller Inventory # M00815631766-G

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Making Miss India Miss World: Constructing Gender, Power, and the Nation in Postliberalization India (Gender and Globalization)
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0815631766
• ISBN 13: 9780815631767
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: good

About this title

Synopsis

For almost half a century, the Miss India competition has been a
prominent feature of Indian popular culture, influencing, over time,
the conventional standard for female beauty. As India participates
increasingly in a global economy, that standard is gradually being
shaped by forces beyond the country’s borders. Through the unexpected
lens of a participant in the 2003 beauty pageant, Susan
Dewey’s Making Miss India Miss World examines what feminine beauty
has come to mean in a country transformed by recent political,
economic, and cultural developments.
Dewey offers readers an up-close view of the beauty pageant
process concentrating on the intense trainng program undergone by
contestants and involving extensive physical, emotional, and cultural
transformations. Covering everything from proper table etiquette to
preferred skin tone, the author reveals the exacting standards set by
pageant officials and reflected in Indian society. Yet she also recognizes
the empowerment these women are afforded by their status as
beauty symbols in a culture increasingly shaped by the visual influence
of national and international media.
Making Miss India Miss World constitutes an important cultural critique
and an enlightening take on how macroeconomic change
affects cultural identity at the individual level.

About the Author

Susan Dewey is assistant professor in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wyoming. She is a cultural anthropologist specializing in macroeconomic policy and Indian culture, particularly women’s culture. Dewey is the author of Hollow Bodies: Institutional Responses to Sex Trafficking in Armenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and India; Neon Wasteland: On Love, Motherhood, and Sex Work in a Rust Belt Town; and coeditor of Policing Pleasure: Sex Work, Policy, and the State in Global Perspective.