Hello all,
I have some exciting news. An article of mine about gender, sexuality, and national identity in Miss Gay America, which is a male beauty pageant, was recently published in Vol 7 pages 98-107 of Cal-Poly’s Journal of Feminist and Queer Studies (Sprinkle).
Click to access Sprinkle_vol7.pdf
Also, check out all the other articles in the above issue as well as the Sprinkle journal itself: http://www.freireproject.org/sprinkle/
The topic of male beauty pageants is often seen as trivial or frivilous, much like female beauty pageants like Miss America. However, male beauty pageants share similar tropes to those of female pageants, in which one person is awarded the power to represent an entire community (in my article’s case, the gay male community). Also, particular gender tropes and ideas are showcased in both.
One day, if I am ever accepted in a doctorate program, I hope to explore in greater nuance and conduct fieldwork on the various regional, national, and international male beauty pageants. For instance, some pageants such as iron-man or body building competitions focus on hyper-masculinization of the male body, whereas pageants like Miss Gay America (Ru Paul’s Drag race is in between reality TV and pageants but deserves a mention) feminize the male contestants in a sense that drag is only a temporary transformation and in turn, codes femininity and femaleness as artifice or superficial. Ultimately, I want to explore the possessive investments in male beauty pageants around gender, sexuality, and (national) identity, for the least.
Until next time,
Nick~
A Maelstrom of my Thoughts 