Film Series Responce - Miss India Georgia

Miss India Georgia is a documentary that follows the lives of four girls of Indian heritage participating in the Miss India Georgia beauty pageant. This pageant exists specifically for women of Indian decent living in Georgia. The biggest question, for me, that this documentary raised is what are the effects, both intended and unintended, of having such a pageant.

The intended effects were rather hard for me to figure out, I think primarily because I'm not a big fan of beauty pageants. I understand there is an argument to be made that they are empowering women, but I honesty think that it is a fairly weak argument. Part of that is because it seems that most women that participate or are involved in pageants who appear in the video media don't come off as appearing very intelligent and are portrayed as having, what I would consider to be, "shallow" values. Though if I attempt to put these biases aside I can see that the goal of the Miss India Georgia pageant could be to promote acceptance and awareness of Indian culture in the Georgian community. Also, it allows for strong Indian women to be recognized in a public sphere where they might not typically be granted this opportunity.

The unintended effects were what really dominated my concerns about the pageant. It did not seem that the pageant was actually promoting awareness of their own culture for the girls who were participating. Rather, they were only concerned with winning. So really the values that the pageant was possibly designed to promote were not actually coming through in the girl's themselves. Also, having a separate pageant from the statewide competition sends an underlying message that these girls are different and do not measure up with normal beauty pageant participants. This only reinforces the sentiments that these girls experience every day at school according to their testimony in the documentary.

Overall I found the documentary fairly concerning. Yes a few of the girls seemed to understand on some level the circumstances surrounding their social interactions, but I do not feel that the pageant was an overall positive force in their lives or was even helpful in widening their perspective or understanding.