“Popular Print culture consumed by the Indian middle and upper classes participates in the wider cultural production of the international

beauty queen as an emerging hero whose story of success circulates within a nation state

that is actively renegotiating its marginal position in the global economic order.” – Global

Queens, National Celebrities

Reita Faria1966 Miss World

Parameswaran Argument

Representations of feminine agency in print culture authorize the ideological interests of India’s consuming classes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIOd3v3Qbpw

Sushmita Sen1994 Miss Universe

Sushmita Sen

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4T3iv8V7aI

The rise of India’s global beauty queens

GlobalizationMedia GrowthBeauty Culture Boom

Economic Boom in India’s beauty industry

• Products • Pageants • Queens

• 1996-2000– 25% growth in cosmetics – $160 million

“Femina” Magazine

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0T21y7Pd7w

“Representation, Agency, and Symbolic Femininity”

• Aquire global “superpower”• Representation of postcolonial critiques of

gender and nation• Middle class readers – Ideologies of traditions and modernity

“Patriarchy, capitalism, and caste, and historical forces of colonialism and nationalism have left their indelible marks on representations of the feminine subject.”

Aishwarya Rai1994 Miss World

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmTBESvPBI0

Socialist Modernity to Capitalist Modernity

Urban middle class Global consumer culture

Reddy

• “Femina”

• “Beauty is more than a physical attribute…”

• Gods, Goddesses

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH0e6jrdAAs

• http://www.femina.in/