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ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Miss Homegrown: The Performance of Food, Festival, and Femininity in Local Queen Pageants

Williams, Heather A.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1245452161

Abstract Details

2009, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, Theatre and Film.
The cultural phenomenon of the beauty pageant, one could argue, is deeply embedded in the gendered performance of the feminine ideal. Although, in recent years, the Miss America Pageant appears to be fading into kitschy nostalgia, the local pageant remains a celebratory and respected event held in many small Midwestern communities. The appeal of the pageant as a performance genre continues to reflect the qualities of the American feminine ideal beauty, perfection, “healthy” competition, consumption, and consumerism. However, local pageants are often rooted within festival celebration and thereby represent and maintain the social and consumer values inherent in each individual community. Using case studies of local festival pageants held in the Midwestern state of Ohio as well as interviews with pageant contestants, in this study I locate the ways in which contestants perform, within the given boundaries of the pageant, a small town version of the feminine ideal. In relation to the values of economy and prosperity that local festival celebrates, I specifically examine festivals that are centered on the celebration of food. In doing so, I equate the gendered performance of the young female body in relation to the food whose title she bears and identify how the feminine body is at once consumed and celebrated by the local community. As queen pageants are contested feminist terrain, it is my hope that this study provides a new and provocative look at local femininity as defined by small town community through the valuing and celebration of the young female representative in local pageant performance.
Ronald Shields, PhD (Committee Chair)
Jonathan Chambers, PhD (Committee Member)
Lesa Lockford, PhD (Committee Member)
Lynda Dee Dixon, PhD (Committee Member)
265 p.
Gender; Theater; Womens Studies
queen pageants; food festival; Miss America; femininity

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Williams, H. A. (2009). Miss Homegrown: The Performance of Food, Festival, and Femininity in Local Queen Pageants [Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1245452161

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Williams, Heather. Miss Homegrown: The Performance of Food, Festival, and Femininity in Local Queen Pageants. 2009. Bowling Green State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1245452161.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Williams, Heather. "Miss Homegrown: The Performance of Food, Festival, and Femininity in Local Queen Pageants." Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1245452161

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1245452161
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© 2009, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.