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Beyond Beauty - The Empowerment Agenda of Miss Universe

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 BEYOND BEAUTY: THE EMPOWERMENT AGENDA OF THE MISS UNIVERSE
PAGEANT

INTRODUCTION

Miss Universe is considered one of the most-watched live TV competitions globally, estimated to
have reached over 1 billion televiewers from 170 countries in one of its coronation nights1. The
beauty pageant, which started in 1952 in California, has received criticisms from human rights
advocates and feminist groups primarily because it is perceived to be commodifying women and
promoting Eurocentric imagery of beauty and unrealistic body structures. Despite these, the
competition annually attracts, on average, 80 representatives from different countries and
territories around the globe. Upon winning, Miss Universe titleholders become household names
and sought-after public personalities, especially if they come from places that follow the pageant
religiously, mostly semi and periphery countries. Young girls, women, and even the Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ+) community from these countries aspire to participate in
the prestige and prizes a winner can get. Moreover, countries bid to host the spectacle, often
referred to as the Olympics of beauty.

However, previous studies have shown that the pageant reinforces sexism and normalizes the male
gaze but forging colonial mentality and the economic, political, and socio-cultural hegemony.
Beauty comes with a price. To counter criticisms and keep its commercial relevance, it had to
retool its presentation almost every year and anchor on branding the pageant that empowers
women23. Hence, this essay aims to examine the ways how the mounting of Miss Universe did
empower women.

Empowerment is an essential aspect in the discourse of development studies as recognized by

David Korten’s “people-centered vision of development” and Dudley Seers’ “human needs
centered development,” who have discussed the relationship between empowerment and achieving

1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhBHTRrIOAs
2
https://www.missuniverse.com/about
3
https://www.nationthailand.com/lifestyle/30360010
authentic development. Alan Thomas helped frame the pre-requisites of empowerment, which are
redistribution of power and transformation of institutions. However, a development challenge
arises when we do not have the same definition and indicators of empowerment. There exist a
disconnect in people’s understanding of the concept, usually based on their gender, educational
background, socioeconomic status, culture, and varying interests. Thus, empowerment becomes
relative and subjective, particularly when we talk about women, which has become a highly
contested gender debate topic. This difference affects how we approach issues that are related to
the development and to achieving gender equality.

This essay provides an opportunity to reconcile how women empowerment's theoretical

frameworks can go hand in hand with feminist studies to further the common objective of
empowering women. The essay will juxtapose the theories to the Miss Universe’s concept of
empowerment because the contest is one of the most polarizing subjects for women empowerment
agendas. Beauty competitions such as Miss Universe have never been more instrumental in
popularizing the word empowerment and how women, especially its candidates, believe that
joining such activity would empower them. Are they genuinely empowered or conditioned to be
one?

The essay will be banking on the subsequent feminist studies: Marxist-Feminism, Intersectionality,
and Transfeminism. Marxist-Feminism will be used to check on the capitalist nature of Miss
Universe’s agenda to promote women empowerment and how the pageant is advocating for
women to be economically independent, which is argued as giving them power and agency in their
lives. On the other hand, intersectionality will assess how Miss Universe projects itself as inclusive
and sensitive to women's different identities but also discriminatory at the same time due to its
current standards for qualifications. Lastly, after allowing trans women to participate, is Miss
Universe a trans feminist organization, or trans women are only used to generate attention and
sustain the pageant’s commercial value?
(WOMEN) EMPOWERMENT

The concept of empowerment was considered to be conceived in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed
by Paulo Freire. The scholar argued that each society has two forces, the oppressor and the
oppressed (Freire, 1974). Since then, the definition of empowerment has been provided by
different scholars to understand its relationship to power, change, and development. Empowerment
is an interactive process through which people experience personal and social change, enabling
them to achieve influence over the organizations and institutions that affect their lives and the
communities in which they live (Whitemore, 1988). It is a process in which people acquire social,
economic, and political power to liberate themselves from injustices in society (Wallerstein, 1992).
Empowerment is a situation in which people, organizations, and communities acquire the needed
control over the problems that affect them (Rappaport 1987, Zimmerman, 1995). With all of the
mentioned meanings, it is clear that the concept of empowerment cannot be understood in just a
single definition (Manuere & Phiri, 2018).

As the discourse on empowerment revolved around power dynamics and understood as

transformative, it has the potential to challenge societal inequalities such as conditions rooted in
gender inequality (Kabeer, 1999). Thus, women empowerment has emerged as its most crucial
frame. One approach to challenge gender inequality is through women gaining power through a
process of women’s empowerment (Mason, 1995). Women empowerment is a situation in which
women are allowed to participate fully in the social, political, and economic spheres of life
(Sushama, 1998). This is a situation in which women move from being oppressed to the state in
which both the oppressor and the oppressed are equal (Chattopadhyay, 2005). However, women's
empowerment can only be understood better when contextualized to social, educational, economic,
political, and psychological (Srivastava, 2001).

The question of attaining empowerment became significant as the concept is considered an

indicator of development. In the succeeding parts, we will attempt to merge conceptual thinkers
and feminist theories to figure how we should measure women's empowerment to know and see,
if possible, its genuine form.
MARXIST-FEMINISM

According to its website, the Miss Universe Organization (MUO) aims to advance opportunities
for women globally through entertainment, fashion, and philanthropy. The pageant’s motto,
“Confidently Beautiful,” seeks to encourage women to challenge themselves and inspire others to
pursue their personal and professional goals while impacting their respective communities. By
advocating women’s active participation in various spheres in today’s society, having their voice
heard, and breaking barriers to achieve their dreams, is Miss Universe promoting a Marxist
Feminist view of empowerment?

As an intersectional theoretical framework, Marxist Feminism believes that empowerment for

women and gender equality can only be achieved by transforming the conditions of their
oppression and exploitation (Sheivari, 2014). To do this, Marxist Feminism argues that women
should not be considered as a separate group because of their sex, but due to class thus allegiance
must be upheld to working-class and impoverished women (Di Stefano, 2014). Obviously, Miss
Universe is a private organization run by Endeavor, a group of entertainment and media
companies. It was previously owned by Donald Trump from 1998 to 2014 before he embarked on
his presidential campaign. Following Marxist Feminism’s concept of supporting underserved
sectors of women, Miss Universe, through its national franchises, was able to change women's
lives all over the world. By being a winner of their national pageant and contestant to the Miss
Universe, women become instant celebrities, which gave them opportunities to earn. Being a
beauty queen becomes their tool to uplift their lives and their families out of poverty.4

The story of Venus Raj5, a former titleholder from the Philippines, is a classic example of how a
pageant can turn a person’s world upside down. Before winning the Miss Universe Philippines
crown, Raj had a rough upbringing because of her family’s financial challenges. With four older
sisters, she was singlehandedly raised by her mother, who worked as a dressmaker. Because of
these struggles, Raj became motivated to do well in pageantry because of the earnings and other

4
https://www.emirates247.com/lifestyle/philippine-cinderellas-beauty-queens-beat-poverty-seize-world-2015-03-
12-1.583957
5
https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/5479/venus-raj-the-goddess-is-a-hometown-girl/
perks that she can win. In 2010, she was named the fourth runner-up in Miss Universe and regarded
as drought-breaker of the Philippines after being part of the Semi-Finalists, which last happened
in 1999. Raj’s achievement catapulted her to stardom in the Philippines and made her an in-demand
television presenter.

In Marxist feminism, reproductive work, commonly known as household chores (including child-
rearing), is a method to exploit women and reinforce the capitalist construct of gendered labor
(Davis, 1981). Thus, there is a need to dismantle the idea that women should be the ones at home,
tending to all the family's needs. By highlighting the participants’ careers, Miss Universe is
pushing for women’s professional growth and inspiring others. However, Marxist feminist
scholars cautioned that encouraging women to take up productive labor would result in a double
day or second shift condition as they are still expected to do unpaid care work at home because of
gender roles and stereotypes (Vishmidt, 2013). They believe that women can only be emancipated
if they are free from having the responsibility for unpaid work. But Miss Universe is also solving
this by promoting women’s different facets and skills and mainstreaming issues such as the wage
gap and violence against women through the contestants’ advocacies and personal narratives.

Raj’s rags to riches story and celebrating women’s careers are the two levels where empowerment
can occur based on Belgium’s Commission on Women and Development Framework. Through
Raj’s involvement in the pageant, individual level of empowerment happened because
opportunities for her increased, which resulted in greater independence and capacity for self-
determination. The advancement of women’s capabilities and capacities, which becomes
collective empowerment, can encourage society to believe in women and provide them resources
to achieve their life desires. Furthermore, being a pageant contestant is only a stepping stone for
women to take control, while others would argue that participating is already a display of agency,
especially with their bodies.
INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISM

There is no publicly listed set of criteria for participation from the MUO. The organization projects
itself as a company built on a foundation of inclusion and a celebration of diversity6. With the
absence of universal qualifications, is Miss Universe observing intersectionality? Intersectionality
or Intersectional Feminism refers to the recognition of women's different identities by determining
the other parts of womanhood and that aside from a woman’s gender and sexuality, a woman also
belongs to a class, a race, has a language, nationality, and age. Because of these identities, their
experiences and the challenges they face may differ from each other, and a particular identity can
make them more vulnerable, unsafe, insecure, and more oppressed (Crenshaw, 1991).

However, specific standards are still maintained by the local franchisees that hold the right to
organize national pageants to determine the representative or sometimes appoint someone to go to
Miss Universe. These standards are claimed to be those unspoken, unpublicized preferences of
MUO in crowning the winner. But it is important to note that because of the liberty given to the
franchise holders, various women identities can compete in their national selection or even further
to the Miss Universe itself.

In the 2018 Miss Universe, Miss Vietnam H’Hen Niê is a member of an indigenous cultural
community called Rade, and at 14, she was arranged to be married as part of their tradition. H’Hen
Niê refused to get wedded and instead sent herself to school by taking several odd jobs in the city.
Upon entering the semifinals, H’Hen Niê’s speech centered on the importance of funding
education for disadvantaged girls, particularly from ethnic minorities in developing countries7.
Despite not winning, H’Hen Niê’s placement in the Top 5 was still celebrated by her country, and
her popularity did not dwindle since then. Women with disabilities were also given a chance to
compete. Shayla Selma Sabbagh8 is a deaf contestant in Miss Universe Canada 2014, Jennifer

6
https://www.missvermontusa.biz/miss-universe
organization.html#:~:text=About%20MUO,to%20reach%20a%20global%20audience.
7
https://news.abs-cbn.com/life/12/19/18/miss-vietnams-inspiring-story-captivates-miss-universe-fans
8
https://headshotnirvana.com/flashback-shooting-the-first-deaf-miss-universe-contestant/
Pulgarin9, also deaf and mute, almost clinched the right to represent Colombia in Miss Universe
2020 by placing the first runner up.

Miss USA New York, the organization that sends New York’s representative to Miss USA, which
when won would represent the USA to the Miss Universe, does not have a height or weight
requirement as it believes that there is no perfect body type. As written on their website, “it is not
about any particular body size, shape, or frame,” and what matters are good health and overall
physical fitness. Miss Universe Canada 2016 Siera Bearchell was criticized for being “bigger”
than the other contestants yet managed to be in the semifinals10. Trans women’s participation will
be touched on in the next part.

In the World Bank’s Agency and Opportunity Structure Model, Miss Universe is an opportunity
structure where individuals can partake in exercising their agency. Opportunity structure refers to
informal and formal institutions that determine who can access assets and whether they can use
their assets. The model opens the idea that the existence of choice can measure degrees of
empowerment (allowing diverse identities of women), use of choice (advancing the women’s
agenda), and the achievement of choice (development outcomes).

TRANSFEMINISM

Transfeminism is defined as a movement by and for trans women who view their liberation as
intrinsically linked to the liberation of all women and beyond (Koyama, 2001). It believes in two
principles: first is respecting the right of individuals in defining their own identities, and second is
promoting individual rights in making decisions about their bodies.

In 2012, after winning her state pageant, which gave her the right to participate in Miss Universe
Canada, beauty queen aspirant Jenna Talackova was told to be unqualified as she was born male.
The organizers argued that the rules were only in coherence with the outstanding qualifications of
MUO for someone to be eligible to compete and represent a country or territory. The issue

9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GN0jAjvc20
10
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/03/13/miss-universe-canada-body-positivity_n_15332154.html
triggered MUO to change its rules from only allowing natural born females to allowing transgender
women to participate as long as they are legally recognized as females.

Miss Universe President Paula Shugart expressed that the organization is serious about supporting
equality for all women and the inclusion of transgender women in the pageant due to their close
consultation with GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation). GLAAD is a non-
governmental organization devoted to countering discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals in
the media and promoting understanding, acceptance, and equality.11

Although Jenna represented her state in the national pageant, it was only in 2018 when Miss
Universe had its first transgender woman contestant courtesy of Miss Spain, Angela Ponce. The
historical participation of Ponce was highlighted when the 2018 Coronation Night gave her a
special segment to celebrate the achievement she made.

The inclusion of trans women in Miss Universe is a policy called “same standards, non-sex
exclusion,” which refers to maintaining existing aesthetic standards and removing criteria based
solely on biology. The approach is the closest to marrying fairness concerns with the broader
feminist values and succeeds in using the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house (Bialystok,
2016). Fairness in this subject is focused on having an opportunity by acquisition and not
predetermined by birth. Talackova and Ponce became eligible because they satisfy the feminine
beauty standards, but their presence helps break the unreflective association between feminine
beauty norms and female bodies. This policy also becomes a way to liberate born female persons
in adhering to the prevailing standards; thus, empowering both women identities in the process.

However, the “same standards, non-sex exclusion” model poses a dilemma about the enforcement
of society’s dichotomous gender system. Miss Universe only amplified the need for trans
individuals, particularly trans women, to fit into this dichotomy, to modify their bodies in
congruence with the dominant imagery of being a woman. Similar to other feminist institutions'
concerns, body image cannot be separated from trans feminist politics. But, given its principles,

11
https://www.britannica.com/topic/GLAAD
transfeminism is challenging how social and political factors influence our decisions while also
demanding society to respect the decisions of trans people regarding their bodies and gender
expression (Koyama, 2001). In the end, it still aims to strengthen the movement to take town
heterosexist patriarchy.

Despite the criticisms about the participation of trans women in Miss Universe, claiming that it is
still rooted in capitalism for the organization and the competition to remain relevant, we cannot
deny the fact of the effects it created. For a marginalized group such as the LGBTQ+ community,
representation, and recognition matter. Having someone in the international arena whom LGBTQ+
individuals can relate to and finally presenting the idea of possibility is consistent with Nalia
Kabeer’s Three Dimensions of Empowerment.

First is having access to resources, anything that is material, human or social in form. By obtaining
resources, one can choose alternatives, therefore increasing the ability to exercise choice. As
access is different from control, the second dimension is the agency or the process that
distinguishes between strategic life choices and second-order choices. Agency means
operationalizing decision-making abilities. Aside from control, both resources and agency are
about awareness and power. The third dimension refers to the achievement or the consequence of
the choices made, based on the extent of the resources and agency. According to Kabeer, it is
essential to determine whether the differences in outcomes are due to the ability to challenge
inequalities rather than personal preference or individual characteristics where power is not an
issue.

In her speech, during the tribute given to her by Miss Universe, Ponce claimed that she did not
only represent Spain, but she represented the “diversity of humans in the world.”

CONCLUSION

The birth and continuous mounting of the Miss Universe competition has unarguably created many
angles in defining and understanding women's empowerment. The rich arguments from different
groups in examining the pageant’s role in the development agenda make it more interesting to
study. Marxist Feminism, Intersectionality, and Transfeminism are only a few feminist theories
that anyone can use to look at the complexities of Miss Universe as a concept, a structure, and a
capital. On the other hand, Kabeer’s Three Dimension of Power, Belgium’s Commission on
Women and Development Framework, and the World Bank’s Agency and Opportunity Model are
approaches to assess Miss Universe as an element that provides resources, agency, and authentic
outcomes to women.

Empowerment must be understood concerning the specific needs of the people who are yearning
for empowerment (Kabeer, 2005). One can become empowered in one or multiple spheres of life,
and women may be empowered within one sphere and not in another (Malhotra et al., 2002). It is
agreed that the ultimate aim is to dismantle the system that perpetuates disenfranchisement, but
this cannot happen in one single approach. Perhaps, Miss Universe presents a way that is being
antagonized? A strategy for women to claim and reclaim? But only one thing is certain, discussions
on the process and meaning of empowerment will continue with or without Miss Universe.
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