Spectacles of Gender and Globalization: Mapping Miss World's Media Event Space in the News

Abstract

The 1996 Miss World pageant in India turned into a controversial event when activist groups launched protests against globalization and cultural imperialism. Approaching news texts as portals into the larger moral order, this article examines the Times of India's representations of the Miss World controversy. The newspaper's colorful photographs of Miss World's organizers, sponsors, and beauty contestants resuscitated the hegemonic cultural politics of consumer modernity while the visual imaging of activist groups inscribed protesters within paradigms of delinquency and disorder. The crafting of news through objectivist signifiers of consent for Miss World legitimized the authority of state and consumer discourses, excluded the poor, and marginalized activists' voices. News stories on Miss World's charitable support for handicapped children inserted institutions of global/local capital into sympathetic templates of Third World salvation. In concluding, the article situates my textual analysis within the economics and professional routines of media production and the discursive inheritances of colonialism.

News Coverage Of Violence Against Women

“…Textual analysis is used in news media studies to understand how social structures gain meanings when they make the headlines (Parameswaran 2004). It reveals the ideologies present at the media landscape that mold discourses related to gender, race, class, ethnicity, and nationality into forms before exposing them to the public eye.…”

A Global Trend

“…Conversely, when women reject gender norms, they are considered as engaging in more deviant behavior, resulting in more negative news coverage, often painting them as societal or cultural outcasts. Feminist scholars have noted that women in non-Western cultures have often been relegated to marginalized status, even among issues of interest to women (see Afshar and Maynard, 2000;Parameswaran, 2004). That is, even within the concept of women's issues and feminism, there appears to be a higher status given to some women, but not others.…”

“…A study of news coverage of the women's movement found that the frequency of stories increased once conflict and dissent heightened within the movement (Ashley and Olson, 1998). Similarly, a study of the Times of India's coverage of the 1996 Miss World pageant found that protests of the event were described through frames of disorder and marginalization (Parameswaran, 2004).…”

Ash‐coloured whiteness: The transfiguration of Aishwarya Rai

“…A number of theorists such as Reddy (2006), Runkle (2004), Parameswaran (2004), and Grewal (2005) have attempted to delineate the effects of the liberalisation of the Indian economy from the late 1980s in the cultural sphere where advertising in beauty or cosmetic products have participated in emergent discourses and consumption practices around femininity. 30 Radhika Parameswaran suggests that 'middle-class women themselves have become a much sought-after market in the global economy', 31 and 'the loud voices of multinational cosmetic companies like Revlon, Oriflame, Avon, L'Oreal, and Bencksier have begun to present a serious threat to the previous monopoly of Lakme and Ponds'.…”