Miss Asian Global Pageant (founded August 1, 1987) was initiated as a part of the Asian Heritage Celebration for the County of Santa Clara in 1987, the pageant's top titleholders include the former First Lady of the State of Washington, Mona Lee Locke, wife of

Gary Locke Gary Faye Locke (born January 21, 1950) is an American politician and diplomat serving as the interim president of Bellevue College, the largest of the institutions that make up the Washington Community and Technical Colleges system. Locke serv ...

and Fala Chen, the 2013 winner of the

Huading Award The Huading Awards are a set of entertainment awards in China. The awards were set up by Tianxia Yingcai Cultural Media Co., LTD () in 2007 in Beijing and are held more than once each year across multiple entertainment media from Chinese televisi ...

for Best Female Drama Actress.

Background

A 2010 book by cultural anthropologist Afia A. Ofori-Mensa studied the relationships among race, gender, and U.S. national identity using the Miss Asian Global Pageant. She found that "panethnic pageants like Miss Asian Global" which came of age in the 1980s plays an important role in the constitution of national identity "through ideal femininity, in both embodied and rhetorical ways." For the

Asian American Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants). Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous people ...

community, the Miss Asian Global Pageant is the "only cultural institution annually endowing one woman and her racialized, gendered, and classed body, the power to represent an entire nation." The pageant remains one of the few national events that allow for a frontal display of non-mainstream ethnic culture for the American public where contestants wear cultural clothing and reinvigorate heritage ties through community-based projects, service learning, and presentations in their heritage language. Cultural integration and the introduction of

neoliberal Neoliberalism (also neo-liberalism) is a term used to signify the late 20th century political reappearance of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism after it fell into decline following the Second World War. A prominent fa ...

values have also been examined through the prism of the Miss Asian Global Pageant extensively by women's studies scholars. Professor Nhi T. Lieu, in studying Miss Asian Global pointed to the pageant's role in promoting capitalism and neoliberal values presented within traditional contexts such as the utilization of the Vietnamese women's garment known as the ao dai. Lieu adds that the role of technology in beauty pageants also enabled the introduction of modernity and consumer goods to many Asian American households in attendance at pageant events. In reviewing the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

legacy and its relationship with Asian American communities in the United States, Ofori-Mensa argues that the Asian American community was able to "utilize pageants strategically, by insisting on the centrality of people of color to U.S. national identity, and by re-imagining the nation as a transnational space where people of color are not systematically excluded."

Titleholders

References

{{Reflist Asian-American culture Beauty pageants for people of specific ethnic or national descents Recurring events established in 1987 International beauty pageants Continental beauty pageants

Background

Titleholders

See also

References