By Theresa Celebran Jones of Hyphen
This week, the internet is abuzz over the new Miss America, Nina Davuluri, who is the first Indian American to win the pageant. The winner’s circle included two other Asian Americans: Miss California Crystal Lee as first runner-up, and Miss Minnesota Rebecca Yeh as fourth runner-up. It was an historic night, no doubt, but as an Asian American woman, the win comes with a lot of mixed feelings.
Miss New York Nina Davuluri walks on the runway after being crowned Miss America 2014 in Atlantic City. Photo from the Washington Post.
Most of those feelings are confusion and surprise. Ratings for Miss America, and thus, the 93-year-old pageant’s relevance, have been on a steady decline for years now. I personally can’t name a single Miss America since Vanessa Williams was stripped of the crown. While Davuluri and Lee both made history within the Miss America pageant, I’m reluctant to see this as a significant step forward for Asian Americans in general. I know, haters gonna hate, but hear me out.
It’s hard not to see this as a bone thrown from an institution that has actively perpetuated and upheld Eurocentric standards of beauty for as long as its been in existence. Yes, what a wonderful thing to finally be validated by a system that exists to objectify women’s bodies, a system that should have been killed with fire long ago. I’m sure this has nothing to do with ratings or breathing life into this dying institution.
First, it came out just days before the pageant that Davuluri was caught on tape fat-shaming other beauty queens, somewhat counterintuitive to her confession of having struggled with bulimia in the past. This may be par for the course when it comes to beauty pagent behavior, but having read about this earlier in the week, it was hard for me to position Davuluri as a champion for change in the pageant circuit.
Read the full article by Theresa Celebran Jones of Hyphen.
