Konvergensi Simbolik Komunitas Pageant Lovers Indonesia di Instagram

Perkembangan dunia beauty pageant di Indonesia tidak terlepas dari peran pecinta kontes kecantikan yang dikenal dengan sebutan pageant lovers. Media sosial Instagram menjadi salah satu kanal bagi komunitas pageant lovers untuk berinteraksi dan berkomunikasi, melalui akun portal pageant. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui konvergensi simbolik komunitas pageant lovers Indonesia di Instagram berdasarkan teori konvergensi simbolik. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah observasi terhadap caption dan kolom komentar pada unggahan akun portal pageant, serta wawancara dengan tiga narasumber dari tiga akun portal pageant berbeda. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa konvergensi simbolik komunitas pageant lovers muncul secara spontan dari anggotanya, dan digunakan secara luas melalui Instagram. Beberapa bentuk konvergensi simbolik yang muncul adalah mbak brownies, turun gunung, dan negara topi bundar. Dari penelitian ini, dapat disimpulkan bahwa konvergensi simbolik yang terjadi dalam komunitas pageant lovers Indonesia di Instagram sesuai dengan teori konvergensi simbolik yang ada, yakni melalui proses tema fantasi, rantai fantasi, tipe fantasi, dan visi retoris. The development of beauty pageants in Indonesia cannot be separated from the role of beauty pageant contest lovers known as pageant lovers. Instagram has become one of the channels for the pageant lovers community to interact and communicate through pageant portal accounts. This study aims to understand the symbolic convergence of the Indonesian pageant lovers community on Instagram based on symbolic convergence theory. The research method used is the observation of captions and comments on pageant portal accounts and interviews with three sources from three different pageant portal accounts on Instagram. The results showed that the symbolic convergence of the pageant lovers community emerged spontaneously from its members and was widely used through Instagram. Several forms of symbolic convergence that occurred were “mbak brownies”, “turun gunung, and “negara topi bundar”. Based on the results, it can be concluded that the symbolic convergence that occurs in the Indonesian pageant lovers community on Instagram is following the existing symbolic convergence theory through the process of fantasy themes, fantasy chains, fantasy types, and rhetorical visions.

PENGARUH EVENT PUTERI INDONESIA DAN ELVIRA DEVINAMIRA TERHADAP PERSEPSI MASYARAKAT ATAS WANITA INDONESIA

Event is something that we could use in reaching a goal and create awareness towards brand and company. The development of event over the year is changing start from exhibitions, performances, until the beauty pageant or beauty contests. Indonesia's oldest beauty pageant was called Puteri Indonesia organized by Yayasan Puteri Indonesia Indonesia under the auspices of the cosmetics company PT. Mustika Ratu. In this study, researchers wanted to know whether there is influence between Event Puteri Indonesia with Elvira Devinamira as Puteri Indonesia 2014 winner of the public perception of women in Indonesia. Where researchers use the main theories Soucre Credibility Theory, and some supporting theories such as events, and perception.As a results, that the effects of the event Puteri Indonesia and Elvira Devinamira to the public perception on Indonesian women have a positive influence. It can be concluded that every woman who follows the selection of Puteri Indonesia definitely a good woman with positive attitude as well.

That Swimsuit Reveals You: Body Image and Bathing Suits of Florida Women

Swimsuits are the most revealing garment that American women wear publicly. Yet wearing them affects how women feel about their bodies and attractiveness. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from convenience samples of Florida women and analyzed in terms of five strata: Competitors (competitive swimmers, beauty-pageant contestants, swimsuit models); College students (Afro-Caribbean, Asian, Black/Afro-American, Hispanic, White); and Adult women (North Florida Black and White; South-Beach Hispanic, and pregnant, as well as older women (doing water aerobics). Anthropometric data (BMI, waist circumference, waist-hip ratios, and bust-waist ratios) were collected and related to Figure Rating Scales and body descriptors, preferred and actual body shapes and sizes, and swimwear types and usage by situations (one-piece, two-piece, bikini, and thong worn in the presence of family and friends or on the beach and in private). Results, matching the literature show participants: (1) overestimate their body size and shape discrepancy from cultural ideals; (2) are affected by the media-depicting “thin ideal. Details of swimwear usage show that for Black and some Hispanic women, constructions of attractiveness are changed to laud larger size to mediate body dissatisfaction and enhance swimsuit use. For Asian women, conservative values rather than body size affect swimsuit usage. But even competitors who enjoy the benefits of swimsuits, as well as women of all ages (body-dissatisfaction continues throughout the lifespan) and ethnic/racial groups, still express body dissatisfaction.

Missing: A Musical Dramedy: Engaging with the missing through the perpetually present

Missing uses a historical reimagining of the murder of JonBenét Ramsey as a launchpad to examine what it is like for a woman of colour to be inundated in a sexist and racist media and cultural spin-cycle. The script tells the story of a young Black girl, Nancy, coming of age and absorbing these cultural messages. In Act 1, Nancy, a child beauty pageant contestant, learns about the death of her friend, JonBenét. Nancy is simultaneously drawn in, obsessed and repulsed by the media storm that follows. In Act 2, indelibly shaped by this childhood event and inspired by her role model Diane Sawyer (pageant winner turned news anchor), Nancy has grown up to be a reporter. She now finds herself peddling similarly problematic stories for ratings and clickbait. Nancy struggles increasingly with both the erasure of identities like her own and the salacious eagerness through which the media (now her job) capitalizes on violence against women in general. The title Missing stems from ‘missing white woman syndrome’ a phrase coined by PBS journalist Gwen Ifill and subsequently adopted by social scientists to refer to the immensely uneven media coverage favouring victims who are upper/middle-class white girls/women in contrast to the coverage and framing of victims of colour. A key goal of the play is to underscore and then question the dominant media representations of women whose stories garner mainstream attention. Whose stories get told? How are they framed? Who, in turn, are marginalized and ignored? How can artists engage representational inequity without inadvertently piling more attention on the already visible? Musicals can and should tackle questions of systemic inequity and inclusion; doing so requires more than positioning protagonists of colour in a theatrical world that fails to acknowledge the systemic realities of our actual one. Missing, a collaborative project in process, tackles these questions.

Digital Borders, Diasporic Flows and the Nigerian Transgender Beauty Queen Who Would Not Be Denied

In 2011, Miss Sahhara, a transgender woman from Nigeria with UK refugee status, was crowned First Princess at the world’s largest and most prestigious beauty pageant for transgender women—Miss International Queen. The then Cultural Minister of Nigeria when contacted for comment responded that if she was transgender, she could not be Nigerian, and if she was Nigerian, she could not be transgender—a tacit denial of her very existence. In recent years, LGBT people “fleeing Africa” to the “Global North” has become a common media trope. Responses to this, emanating from a variety of African voices, have provided a more nuanced reading of sexuality. What has been absent from these readings has been the role of gender expression, particularly a consideration of transgender experiences. I understand transgender refugees to have taken up “lines of flight” such that, in a Deleuzian sense, they do not only flee persecution in countries of origin but also recreate or speak back to systems of control and oppressive social conditions. Some transgender people who have left, like Miss Sahhara, have not gone silently, using digital means to project a new political visibility of individuals, those who are both transgender and African, back at the African continent. In Miss Sahhara’s case, this political visibility has not gone unnoticed in the Nigerian tabloid press. Drawing on the story of Miss Sahhara, this paper maps these flows and contraflows, asking what they might reveal about configurations of nationhood, gender and sexuality as they are formed at both the digital and physical interstices between Africa and the Global North.

“I want to … let my country shine”: Nationalism, development, and the geographies of beauty

There is little geographic work on beauty. Yet beauty offers important insights into spatial, geopolitical, and geoeconomic processes. In this article, we attend to the powerful role of beauty labor, norms, and practices in national development. We center the Miss Tourism Uganda beauty pageant, held annually since 2011, and the centerpiece of tourism-based development in Uganda. Designed to attract foreign visitors and investors and to promote a sense of nationalist pride among Ugandans, the pageant-as-development strategy is increasingly mirrored across the neoliberalized Global South. This approach relies on young women’s beauty labor: the work of self-improvement via intimate beauty technologies, and the intellectual work of learning and showcasing a beautiful, idealized, national imaginary. This labor is physically, emotionally, and financially demanding, and is largely unremunerated. Yet, it is lucratively exploited to promote local and international corporate brands, generate tourism revenue, and attract foreign investment. Despite this, pageant participants and organizers find creative and collaborative strategies to navigate these demands. As part of our efforts to fashion a “geographies of beauty”, this article argues that the power of beauty, and specifically the labor of beauty, is central to understanding contemporary tourism-centered development efforts.

An overview of Beauty Standards as culturally projected within Ghana’s Most Beautiful Pageant

Beauty pageants such as Ghana’s Most Beautiful (GMB) normally select a lady to serve as a symbolic representation of their collective identity to a larger audience. The common tastes including fashion and lifestyle of members of a society collectively form and represent the tastes and lifestyle of its people; therefore the fashion and culture of a particular time symbolize the spirit of the times. Cultural principles refer to the cultural values that are categorized, organized and evaluated in each society. The principles governing standards in one region or country may not be same for other places. For example, the reasons for wearing of beads in one region may differ from that of other regions in Ghana. Standards are held to when they are documented and subsequently in line with cultural values. In a discussion with two members of the GMB organizing team during a national audition at TV3 premises in August 2017, they admitted that there was no comprehensive policy document spelling out beauty standards and guidelines of the pageant. The research adapts a sequential exploratory design with a population made up of all participants of GMB. The purpose of the study was to find out the beauty standards of GMB pageant as culturally projected within the beauty pageant. It was found out that the pageant occasionally deviates from its main focus of projecting Ghanaian cultural values. It should therefore regularly refer to its objectives while exhibiting all its activities.

The Town Square in your Pocket: Exploring Four Metaphors of Social Media

In this paper we explore the use of four metaphors as a means to illuminate particular dimensions of social media logic —the norms, strategies, and economics underpinning its dynamics. Our objective is to utilise metaphor to instigate critical reflection about the nature of social media use behaviour and the role of habitual social media use in our experiences of reality. The first metaphor, social media as a town square, draws attention to the centrality of social media platforms in their users’ lives, fear of missing out, augmented reality and digital dualism. Through the second metaphor, social media as a beauty pageant, we explore self-presentation or image crafting, social comparison and self-evaluation. The third metaphor, social media as a parliament, emphasises the role of social media platforms as spaces for online deliberation and we consider social media capital, homophily and polarisation as themes. Finally, we explore anonymity, deindividuation and deceptive self-presentation through our fourth metaphor, social media as a masquerade ball. We argue that social media scholars can use these and other metaphors to enhance communication of their research findings. Additionally, we believe that social media metaphors can be powerful pedagogical and communication tools, particularly when working with students for whom high levels of social media use is the norm.