Queen for a Day: Transformistas, Beauty Queens, and the Performance of Femininit

<i>Queen for a Day</i> connects the logic of Venezuelan modernity with the production of a national femininity. In this ethnography, Marcia Ochoa considers how femininities are produced, performed, and consumed in the mass-media spectacles of international beauty pageants, on the runways of the Miss Venezuela contest, on the well-traveled Caracas avenue where transgender women (<i>transformistas</i>) project themselves into the urban imaginary, and on the bodies of both <i>transformistas</i> and beauty pageant contestants (<i>misses</i>). Placing<i> transformistas</i> and <i>misses </i>in the same analytic frame enables Ochoa to delve deeply into complex questions of media and spectacle, gender and sexuality, race and class, and self-fashioning and identity in Venezuela.</p><p>Beauty pageants play an outsized role in Venezuela. The country has won more international beauty contests than any other. The femininity performed by Venezuelan women in high-profile, widely viewed pageants defines a kind of national femininity. Ochoa argues that as<i> transformistas</i> and <i>misses</i> work to achieve the bodies, clothing and makeup styles, and postures and gestures of this national femininity, they come to embody Venezuelan modernity.<br><br><b>Author:</b> Marcia Ochoa<br><b>Publisher:</b> Duke University Press<br><b>Published:</b> 05/19/2014<br><b>Pages:</b> 296<br><b>Binding Type:</b> Paperback<br><b>Weight:</b> 0.89lbs<br><b>Size:</b> 8.99h x 7.05w x 0.71d<br><b>ISBN:</b> 97808