Manufactured Beauties India’s Integration into the Global Beauty Industry Susan Runkle This article, based upon my participant observation as an academic researcher and unpaid consultant at the Miss India pageant’s six week intensive training program for contestants, addresses how the pageant has emerged as a site for the creation of a new kind of woman in post-liberalization India. Under the guidance of leaders of the Indian fashion, film and beauty industries, Miss India contestants learn how to construct gendered identities. hroughout my presence at the The literature that surrounds serve as a valuable contribution to 2003 Miss India training as an beauty pageants largely focuses understanding not only what Tanthropologist conducting upon the pageant as a space within pageants as a cultural phenomenon research as well as assisting in which either popular culture (eg; mean, but also as a means by which simple tasks such as writing Banet-Weiser 1999; Riverol 1992; to gain a clearer picture of what questions for contestants, I was Lovegrove 2002) or globalization gendered experience actually means consistently struck by similarities (Cohen et al 1995) are critiqued. I in the whole spectrum of women’s between the creation of beauty contend that recognizing that experience. queens and theories of the body that standards of beauty must necessarily Young women enter the Miss stem from the Industrial Revolution. be negotiated by most women in the India pageant fully expecting to Perhaps there has never been a more course of their lived experience would change not only their bodies, but apt example of thinking of the body also to emerge several months later as a machine with parts to be repaired Young women enter the as fundamentally altered human and replaced. Emblematic of gender Miss India pageant fully beings. Under the gaze of the experts as performance (Butler 1994), the expecting to change not at the training programme and later, construction of twenty-six potential only their bodies, but also the judges, individual women try Miss Indias from a group of relatively their best to present the qualities that ordinary young women points to to emerge several months Miss India as a concept is associated ways in which the body is what later as fundamentally with; the qualities, in short, which scholars such as Davis (1995) have altered human beings. ideally are to represent the pinnacle called “cultural plastic.” of its version of Indian womanhood No.143 14 at international pageants like Miss Guha described as “very secular, very Universe and Miss World. cosmopolitan and very modern and Following economic liberalization outgoing.” This is the kind of outlook, in 1991, the Miss India pageant grew which is not based in regional identity, from an event that originally but in a more decentered concept of showcased Indian textiles into a full- self, that is emblematic of what Miss fledged media extravaganza. The most India is today. notable post-liberalization change in The Miss India pageant holds a both the magazine and the Miss India thirty day training seminar in Bombay pageant has been a shift from a focus Every morsel is watched and measured prior to the event itself. During the course of this one month, twenty- on national identity to a focus on young women who will comprise the three contestants are housed, trained individual identity. Current Femina final twenty-three that compete for and made beautiful in what is an editor Sathya Saran was quick to the Miss India crown. Interestingly, institution with one goal in mind: to describe the Miss India pageant as however, as he described his annual create a Miss World or a Miss a tool with which to promote the search to me in the course of an Universe. Every morning, for thirty magazine and also to, as she put it, interview, he was adamant that as he days, Miss India contestants attend “launch young women into life.” meets with young women in the urban fitness classes twice a day and have Indeed, it was only after liberalization centers that Femina chooses each all of their meals catered by well- that the three winners were chosen year, he is not simply looking for a known dietician Anjali Mukherjee. In each year in the Miss India pageant, Miss India, but for a Miss Universe or fact, every aspect of the pageant titled Miss India-World, Miss India- a Miss World. employs the best-known people in Universe, and Miss India-Asia Yet the concept of Miss India the glamour industry to perform Pacific, were groomed specifically for being exclusively urban is not a new necessary services, thereby helping each pageant. Each title winner then one. Because of the enormous cultural to construct an image of the pageant goes on to compete in the divide that exists between urban and as larger than life. Having the international pageant that her Miss rural India, young women who do not opportunity to meet with the India title decides for her, with Miss live in big cities do not have the same individuals who train them, all of Universe being the most prestigious. kind of access to media images in whom are extremely well known The process of becoming Miss terms of lifestyle that their urban throughout urban India, gives young India begins every year in August or counterparts do. As a result, according women who compete in the pageant September, when Femina magazine to Pradeep Guha, they do not have the chance to create a social network prints entry forms in both its pages the kind of knowledge required to that will allow them to build careers present themselves as beautiful on a and in the pages of the group’s in the glamour industry in India. global stage. flagship newspaper, the Times of Beyond fitness and diet This symbolic capital is most often India. Several thousand young regimens, however, the month-long found in young women who come women from all parts of the country seminar also includes a heavy focus from backgrounds that have allowed submit the form along with on the worlds of modeling, fashion them a great deal of independence. photographs of themselves, one a full and cinema. As these are the fields Many come from military families, body shot and one a close-up of the into which most Miss India whose constant mobility in terms of face. Based on these photographs, a contestants go after the pageant is lifestyle places them as what Pradeep more limited number of young women over, it is only appropriate that the are summoned to participate in the seminar is weighted in this direction. pageant if they fall within the Young women who do not As such, simply being able to make parameters of being above 5’7’’ in live in big cities according it into the pageant itself can serve height and under 25 years of age. to Pradeep Guha do not as a life changing experience for Pradeep Guha, the publisher of have the kind of knowledge many young women, who compete Femina and manager of the pageant, with one another in a process, then conducts a tour of major urban required to present undertaken by experts in the Indian areas in India during which he themselves as beautiful fashion, film and beauty industries, personally meets with every aspiring on a global stage. which Pradeep Guha referred to as contestant in order to select the “chiseling”. No.143 15 Ingredients of Miss World experts are treated with deference A suburban Mumbaiite both at the pageant and in popular The Femina Miss India pageant culture at large. for marination Experts who Recreate The essence of a diet, a la Anjali The panel of experts who Mukherjee comprised the 2003 training staff did A powder blue concoction from not vary much from years past. Hemant ‘Sheetal’ Trivedi Large Comprised of a list of celebrities and helpings of Mickey Mehta/Rama individuals well known in the field of Bans workouts media in Bombay, they are chosen to Dermatologist Jamuna Pai’s impart knowledge to the contestants skincare, peeled to perfection as part of the gurukul system that Finely grated talk by the high Mr. Parigi envisions. These included priestess of politesse Sabira Making assembly line products a fashion designer, dermatologist, Merchant a network would ordinarily otherwise dietician, two hair stylists, a make up A dash of timely marketing be impossible for a young woman not artist, a self-styled ‘grooming expert’, Swarovsky to sprinkle a personal trainer, a cosmetic dental from an elite background, although Sundry advice (optional) surgeon, a spiritual guide, a diction some contestants certainly do come (Times of India Dec 27, 1996). coach, the head of an art foundation, As the ‘recipe’ above clearly from upper class families. Citing the and a photographer. illustrates, the contestant herself is benefits that simply participating Being an expert brings with it a discursively constructed as in the training programme provides variety of privileges and contributing rather little to the to young women, Mareesha responsibilities, the most striking of process of becoming Miss World. underscores the way in which Miss which is the right to be exceedingly Rather, it is ‘the experts’ who do the India acts as a gateway to social rude without cause. One fashion majority of the work by sculpting her mobility. designer, who designs the clothing into the ideal of what Miss World The culture of celebrity that the contestants wear at the pageant, should be. The initial ingredient, “a positions those deemed the experts is an excellent example of this. A suburban Mumbaiite”, followed as it as authorities on everything from their choreographer and designer had to is by the names of the experts, is a actual field to what constitutes warn the contestants to be rather snide reference to the symbolic capital is largely the result exceedingly polite to her, noting: enormous class divide that exists of economic liberalization, which “She may not be the warmest between a young woman from the necessitated the development of a person in the world, but that does not suburbs and the elite, South Bombay- group of individuals who could mean you give her any bad vibes.