Miss Usa

Having 5 different speakers on the panel, the talk covered many different interesting topics revolving the topic of African American beauty pageants and their impact on producing the socially defined “perfect” woman. The first speaker, Maxine Craig, mentioned that there is much less black self-representation, as white people usually represent them. Also, black beauty pageant queens are usually political activists, which are very different from their white counterparts, showing that black beauty is actually a political notion. Since Vanessa Williams became the first African American to be crowned Miss USA, there have been 6 others who won the title. This breaks the idea of a “race barrier” as race no longer makes a difference in beauty pageants. In the fashion industry, black women have been used as models for front covers of fashion magazines like Vogue.

I felt that the talk was very interesting as coming from Singapore, I was vaguely aware of the underrepresentation of black women in USA, but did not know much of this phenomenon. After attending this lecture, I understand the whole history of black women representation in America and how this has changed over the years. I feel that today’s American society is generally non-discriminative when it comes to black women as people judge others based on non-racial factors. The fact that black women participate in beauty pageants and reality TV programs like America’s Next Top Model and American Idol is testament to this, as audiences admire them for their talent and not hate them because of their skin color. The success of Fantasia and Jennifer Hudson in American Idol further supports this. Despite them being black, because of their talent in singing, they are still able to garner the support of the audience. Hence, I feel that the society has come a long way in the representation of black women.