This article uses a comparative-case research design of two different national beauty pageants in Nigeria to ask how and why gendered nationalisms are constructed for different audiences and aims. Both contests claim to represent “true Nigerian womanhood” yet craft separate models of idealized femininity and present different nationalist agendas. I argue that these differences stem from two distinct representations of gendered national identities. The first pageant, “Queen Nigeria,” whose winners do not compete outside of Nigeria, brands itself as a Nigerian-based (...) pageant, centered on a cultural-nationalist ideal, which is focused on revitalizing and appreciating Nigerian culture to unify the nation. In contrast, the second contest, “The Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria,” utilizes “international standards” to select and send contestants to Miss World and Miss Universe, the top pageants in the world, and promotes a cosmopolitan-nationalist ideal, which remains concentrated on propelling and integrating Nigeria into the international arena. (shrink)

Beauty is constantly lived and incorporated as a meaningful social category in Brazil and intersects with racialised and gendered ways of belonging to the Brazilian nation. In this article, I deploy ethnographic material to show how middle-class women self-identifying as black embody and experience beauty and how, through practices and discourses centred on physical appearance, they both reinforce and challenge broader social and racial inequalities in Brazil.

Dress serves as a discursive daily practice of gender, and this article explains the dress practices of Bosnian Muslim refugee women living in Vermont. These dress practices tend toward elaborate, carefully cultivated styles for hair, makeup, and dress. Based on participant observation, in-depth interviews, and secondary historical sources, the authors seek to explain the meanings and practice of these dress practices. They argue that gendered dress practices reflect agentic processes that are situated within the flow of time and are rooted (...) in relational processes that occur at the macrostructural level of history and nation and at the micro world of social interaction and lived experience. (shrink)