Beauty Pageants

Body Aesthetics in Popular Culture: The Role of Beauty Pageants

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Though a bit clichéd, this adage has gained much currency over the years. In addition, this speaks volumes of how beauty has overrun human mental faculties in the expression of art and culture. The charm of the beauty of people and things is such that it has fascinated humanity over centuries causing its expressions to emerge in various forms. Of late when the visual culture has hogged the floor with all its might, the shows celebrating the beauty of human bodies have gained more popularity. However, there are also views that such things amount to mere showbiz in a highly commercialized society marked by its characteristic snobbishness and objectification of women. Such things are debatable, but at the same time, their values as art in the domain of popular culture cannot be underrated.

Today’s world has been shaped by the concept of body aesthetics especially when it concerns the visual art forms. It finds expression in many visual art forms like films, music shows, dance shows, soap opera, circus, male and female body shows, to mention a few. Ironically, there is an inherent contradiction in the new post-feminist representations of women: on the one hand they want to subvert traditional sexist ideologies by inverting role behaviours, while on the other, they reinforce sexist ideologies by catering to the notions of celebrating femininity where beauty is looked upon as an attribute of power.

This webinar intends providing a forum for engaging in a theoretical, political, and historical analysis of the concept of beauty and body aesthetics that appear in various forms by means of the characteristically popular shows emerging and setting trends in the cultural scenario of the modern world.

Thrust areas of the webinar:

• Beauty Pageants and the Visual Culture

• Commercialization and commodification of beauty in contemporary society

• Modes of representation of beauty in cultural expressions.

• Body Aesthetics and the Visual Culture in films, music, body shows etc.

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