[Soasiastudents] Radhika Parameswaran

[Keith Snodgrass]

RADHIKA PARAMESWARAN
March 14, 2005
3:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Communications 126

"Global Queens, National Celebrities: Tales of Feminine Empowerment in
Post-Liberalization India"

The uneven and heterogeneous impact of globalization has provoked vigorous
interdisciplinary debate in the last two decades. Although scholars have
studied audiences' reception of global media and consumer culture, very
little research has paid attention to the ways in which new ideologies of
professionalism, class mobility, and meritocracy persuade the citizens of
recently globalized nations to embrace the utopian logic of global
consumerism.

Focusing on India's six Miss World and Miss Universe title-holders as
embodiments of new global/national subjects, my project's analysis of print
media texts maps the cultural production of the beauty queen as an emerging
folk hero whose tale of ascent circulates in a nation that is renegotiating
its marginal position in the global economy. News and magazine texts
celebrate global beauty queens' bodily discipline and devotion to fitness
and grooming programs as evidence of the productive hard work of committed
professionals. Popular biographies construct elite beauty queens as humble
and ordinary women, who have struggled to overcome adversity in their
pursuit of global fame. Media accounts navigate the boundaries between
modernity and tradition when they represent beauty queens as
hybrid--wholesome, patriotic, and cosmopolitan--young women who preserve
their authentic and pure national identities despite their success in the
global arena. 
Unpacking the mythical tales of class, gender, and national ascent that are
smuggled into the public profiling of the global beauty queen, I argue that
such representations of feminine agency in popular print culture authorize
the ideological interests of India's consuming classes.

Keith Snodgrass      
Associate Director  & Outreach Coordinator
South Asia Center, Jackson School                     
Box 353650, University of Washington                  
Seattle, WA 98195    
Phone: (206)543-4800; Fax(206)685-0668                                    
                     South Asia Center on the Web:
     <http://jsis.artsci.washington.edu/programs/soasia/index.htm>
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