For almost half a century, the Miss India competition has been a prominent feature of Indian popular culture, influencing, over time, the conventional standard for female beauty. As India participates increasingly in a global economy, that standard is gradually being shaped by forces beyond the country’s borders. Through the unexpected lens of the 2003 beauty pageant, Susan Dewey’s Making Miss India Miss World examines what feminine beauty has come to mean in a country transformed by recent political, economic, and cultural developments.
How does Sushmita Sen remain poised and confident? What is Madhu Sapre's secret recipe for perfect skin? How does Neha Dhupia deal with bad hair days? What are Lara Dutta's make-up tips to look youthful? Answering these and many more questions, How to Look Like Miss India is a practical guide by Sathya Saran who was on the core team of the Femina Miss India Contest for several years. In this book she brings you helpful, easy-touse tips and advice from Wendell Rodricks, Ambika Pillai, Dr Jamuna Pai, Mickey Contractor and many others. The people who turned Sushmita Sen, Aishwarya Rai and Priyanka Chopra into superstars reveal industry secrets that create the winning formula. From making your skin glow to choosing clothes that flatter your body type, this is the book you need to read whether you want to be Miss India or your very best self
The Nigerian beauty pageant industry positions itself as working to symbolically restore the public face of the nation while seeking to materially shift the private lives of affiliates on the ground.
Taken under the wing of an expat teacher for her ambition and talent, Anjali Bose hopes to escape unfavorable prospects and falls in with a crowd of young people in Bangalore, where she endeavors to confront her past and reinvent herself.
SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE. Jennifer Hosten went to the 1970 Miss World pageant on a lark, representing the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada, and came home with the crown and a place in history. What was supposed to be a light-hearted affair, with a parade of the world's most beautiful women vying for the attention of the judges and comedian/host Bob Hope, turned out to be the most controversial, politically-charged, and consequential pageant ever. Women's liberation activists blew up a BBC broadcast truck and stormed London's Royal Albert Hall in an attempt to sabotage the show, which they deemed a "cattle market." They threw rotten vegetables in the auditorium and hit Bob Hope with a flour bomb. When order was restored, Jennifer Hosten made history as the first women of colour to win the title. The broadcast introduced its massive audience to both a militant new brand of feminism and a new ideal of beauty, one in which the whole world could share. Ms. Hosten followed her triumph with a successful career as a diplomat and public servant in Grenada and Canada. Her book tells the stories of the epochal 1970 contest and her life with grace and an amused modesty. Her story has been purchased by the makers of The Crown and is the basis for Misbehavior, a 2020 film starring Keira Knightley. Rising British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who plays Jennifer Hosten, is contributing a foreword to the book.
Through micro-analysis of language use, this book chronicles young women's pathways to becoming a Tanzanian beauty queen, offering an original perspective on the intersection of language with globalization, nationalism, and inequality in urban East Africa. This compelling linguistic ethnography considers the real-life effects, both on- and off-stage, of language policy, education, and gender dynamics for the women competing in the pageants. While highlighting many contestants' struggles for escape from poverty and patriarchy, the book also emphasizes their creative strategies – linguistic and otherwise – for bettering their lives and shows how people living in a global economic periphery take part in, and sometimes feel left out of, the wider world.
At a time of significant change in the precarious world of female individualization, this collection explores such phenomena by critically incorporating the parameters of popular media culture into the overarching paradigm of gender relations, economics and politics of everyday life.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this thoughtful and revealing memoir, readers will accompany one of the world’s most recognizable women on her journey of self-discovery. “I have always felt that life is a solitary journey, that we are each on a train, riding through our hours, our days, our years. We get on alone, we leave alone, and the decisions we make as we travel on the train are our responsibility alone.” A remarkable life story rooted in two different worlds, Unfinished offers insights into Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s childhood in India; her formative teenage years in the United States; and her return to India, where against all odds as a newcomer to the pageant world, she won the national and international beauty competitions that launched her global acting career. Whether reflecting on her nomadic early years or the challenges she has faced as she has doggedly pursued her calling, Priyanka shares her challenges and triumphs with warmth and honesty. The result is a book that is philosophical, sassy, inspiring, bold, and rebellious. Just like the author herself. From her dual-continent twenty-year-long career as an actor and producer to her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, from losing her beloved father to cancer to marrying Nick Jonas, Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s story will inspire a generation around the world to gather their courage, embrace their ambition, and commit to the hard work of following their dreams.
“A perfect book”—and basis for the Maggie Smith film—about a teacher who makes a lasting impression on her female students in the years before World War II (Chicago Tribune). “Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life!” So asserts Jean Brodie, a magnetic, dubious, and sometimes comic teacher at the conservative Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh. Brodie selects six favorite pupils to mold—and she doesn’t stop with just their intellectual lives. She has a plan for them all, including how they will live, whom they will love, and what sacrifices they will make to uphold her ideals. When the girls reach adulthood and begin to find their own destinies, Jean Brodie’s indelible imprint is a gift to some, and a curse to others. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is Spark’s masterpiece, a novel that offers one of twentieth-century English literature’s most iconic and complex characters—a woman at once admirable and sinister, benevolent and conniving. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Muriel Spark including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s archive at the National Library of Scotland.
From beloved English author D.E. Stevenson who has sold more than 7 million books worldwide! In the first heartwarming book of this classic series, D.E. Stevenson proves that one little book can be the source of all kinds of trouble when residents of a small English village start to see themselves through someone else's eyes. Barbara Buncle is in a bind. Times are harsh, and Barbara's bank account has seen better days. Maybe she could sell a novel ... if she knew any stories. Stumped for ideas, Barbara draws inspiration from her fellow residents of Silverstream, the little English village she knows inside and out. To her surprise, the novel is a smash. It's a good thing she wrote under a pseudonym, because the folks of Silverstream are in an uproar. But what really turns Miss Buncle's world around is this: what happens to the characters in her book starts happening to their real-life counterparts. Does life really imitate art, and can she harness that power for good? With the wit and charm of a Jane Austen novel and the gossipy, small-town delight of the Flavia de Luce series, Miss Buncle's Book is D.E. Stevenson at her best!
