Constructions of Authenticity and Colonial Logic in the Miss Universe Competition (Natasha Varner)

Tonight in Sao Paolo, Brazil 89 women from around the world gather to compete in the 60^th annual Miss Universe competition. What does this have to do with our readings on authenticity this week? Quite a bit, actually.

One of the primary components of the Miss Universe competition is the national costume parade. It is traditionally the opening event of the evening and entails a glittery display of essentialized representations of national identity. Many contestants from the Americas and the Caribbean don indigenous inspired dress that oftentimes sexualizes, trivializes, and misrepresents indigenous cultures. Take for example, Miss Canada’s costume from this year’s competition:

Image from the Native Appropriations blog.

 The amalgamation of Haida-inspired dress and Plains Indian headdress and the sloppy, machine-made look of each belie the cultural and historical inaccuracy of her dress. Miss Canada also physically performs a stereotypical version of indigeneity by crossing her arms just like the chiefs in all the Disney films do. I haven’t seen the competition yet, but I won’t be surprised if Miss Canada tops her performance off by raising her right arm and greeting the audience with a resounding “HOWWW.”

I know. I still haven’t gotten to why this all matters or what it has to do with authenticity. For this I’ll turn to Edward Said, whose work on Orientalism tells us much about how representations are created and validated[1]. Miss Canada’s rendition of indigeneity and other representations of Indigenous dress and culture on display at the Miss Universe competition are more harmful than the average hipster headdress-wearing concert-goer because the beauty queens are “authorized” representatives of their respective nations. Everything from the sashes worn by the contestants to their country-based monikers (Miss U.S.A., Miss Brazil, etc.) to declarations that the event is a “mini United Nations” in Miss Universe behind-the-scenes videos[2] create the illusion that these women are authorized, authentic representations of their home nations.

In other words, through a number of signifiers, the competition creates the allusion of authenticity and as a result the identities performed therein might be complacently accepted by international viewers as true representations of national identity. These authorized misconceptions are problematic on many levels but perhaps the most egregious is the hypersexualization of indigeneity. The sexy, bikini-ed rendition of the Peruvian scissor dancer from last year’s competition provides a perfect example of how indigenous dress – in this case, dress traditionally worn exclusively by men – is recast as sexy and feminine:

This sexualizaition of indigeneity is tool of colonization that, as scholars like Andrea Smith have pointed out, has been used to justify colonial logic for centuries[3]. That logic goes something like this: Indigenous peoples and their bodies – and by logical extension, their property and land - are sexual objects that are inherently violable and thus eligible for rape, colonization, and appropriation according to the needs of the settler state. The manifestations of this logic are evident everywhere from the extraordinarily high rates of sexual violence against Native women to the rampant exploitation of Native lands that continues today.

The Miss Universe competition, at first glimpse, may seem like a benign and frivolous display of world beauty. Once we look more deeply at these underlying messages about indigeneity, the justifications of colonial logic, and the way in which those representations are made to seem authentic, we become keyed in to a far more troubling and deeply historical pattern.

Organizers of this year’s competition anticipate “close to a billion viewers from around the world.” The Miss Universe website was so heavily trafficked this evening that the site was down for several hours. These images and representations matter – and should be interrogated – because of how widely viewed they are, because of the careful manner in which the illusion of authenticity is constructed, and finally because they are embedded with messages about indigeneity that reflect a deep history of colonial violation and exploitation that we must begin to dismantle. 

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[1] Said, Edward. “Introduction to Orientalism” The Routledge Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. Ed. Neil Badmington and Julia Thomas. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. 213-233.

[2] Miss Universe Website. Miss Universe Organization, 2011.

[3] Smith, Andrea. Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Cambridge: South End Press, 2005. Print.