stay on active duty for a period after basic versal service would thus be retained, but training. Career-oriented professionals, the mass citizen army—rendered unafford- meanwhile, would have renewable, long- able by expensive high-tech weapons sys- term contracts. The principle of nearly uni- tems—would not.

Miss ’s Many Meanings “The Ideology of in National, Consumerist, and Transnational Space” by William A. Callahan, in Alternatives (Jan.–Mar. 1998), Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1800 30th St., Ste. 314, Boulder, Colo. 80301–1026. When the young women in a beauty con- and held almost every year until 1957, when test strut their stuff, high national politics is a military coup brought an end to the consti- usually the furthest thing from anyone’s tution, its festival, and what might be termed mind, on stage or off. But the history of the Miss Thailand’s governmental phase. Miss Thailand pageant tells a different story, In 1961, however, the Los Angeles-based suggests Callahan, a lecturer in East Asian proprietors of the Pageant politics at the University of Durham, in came looking for “Miss Thailand,” and per- England. suaded a local organization to convert its The pageant got started in Siam (as annual beauty contest into a new national Thailand was then known) pageant. It survived until a in 1934, after two years of massive student uprising for political turmoil that left democracy brought the cur- Siam’s king in exile and a tain down on the shameful new democratic constitution “meat market” in 1973. in place. The new govern- But only for a time. “After ment inaugurated the “Miss 12 years in mothballs,” Siam” beauty pageant as part Callahan writes, “Miss Thai- of a “Constitution Festival,” land was resurrected” in in the hope, Callahan says, 1984 as a wholly commer- of promoting “modern, cial venture, sponsored by Western ideas—constitu- Colgate Palmolive and oth- tion, progress, civilization, ers. Not only is the contest a nation—against the ‘tradi- U.S. import, he observes, tional’ Thai absolute monar- but so are some of the Miss chy.” The first Miss Siam Thailands! Miss Thailand was awarded a crown 1988 had earlier reigned as engraved with an image of Miss Teen California; all the constitution. grumbling about that ceased Starting in 1938, with the when she went on to invading Japanese at war in become Miss Universe. China, the pageant’s govern- “Neither the Thai govern- ment sponsors increasingly ment nor the Thai public emphasized nationalism seem to mind having U.S.- rather than constitutional- raised women representing ism. The Interior Ministry’s them in international com- pageant office vowed to pro- petitions,” Callahan notes. duce a “Miss Siam who is as To him, this suggests that beautiful as the beauty “nationalism, like ‘beauty,’ is queens of other countries.” not a natural category, but Though interrupted by one constructed and recon- World War II, the Miss structed for various purpos- Thailand Pageant (as it Miss Thailand is crowned Miss Uni- es—political, military, eco- became known after the verse 1988. She had come to America nomic, and otherwise.” country’s name change in at age two and only returned to Nationalism, it seems, is in 1939) was revived in 1948 Thailand for the pageant that year. the eye of the beholder.

142 WQ Summer 1998