In 1970, the Miss America pageant finally featured a Black contestant. Even more consequentially that year, Jennifer Hosten became the first Black winner of Miss World since its creation in 1951. The contest was held in London, and as in the United States in the late 1960s, the British women’s liberation movement protested the pageant over sexism and its objectification of women.
Some women, including Hosten, a Black woman from Grenada, did not view pageants in this light. Hosten explained, “It wasn’t my thought that I was being exploited. If I had thought that, I wouldn’t have taken part.” She said she simply entered pageants to travel, represent her country and possibly make money. By selecting a Black winner, the pageant seemed to signal a shift in beauty standards to be more inclusive and representative.
But the politics of the event were also ambivalent. As the world criticized South Africa for its highly racist and unjust apartheid system, Miss World organizers allowed the country to send two candidates — one White, one Black — to compete on the country’s behalf. Although Pearl Jansen, a Black South African, placed second at the event, the pageant explicitly displayed South African apartheid on a global platform by allowing dual contestants.
Moreover, White media outlets undermined Hosten’s win, with skeptical headlines that asked: “Miss World is Black, and is she the most beautiful girl in the world?” It was difficult for some viewers and commentators to see a Black woman as fully beautiful in light of long-standing Eurocentric beauty standards. As sociologist Maxine Leeds Craig has said, as a pageant like Miss America “established the reigning definition of beauty, it reinforced cultural codes that placed Black women outside of the beauty ideal.”
Contrasting Miss Black America in 1968 and Miss World in 1970 is instructive. Although both selected Black winners, Miss Black America enabled Black women to express disapproval of Eurocentric beauty standards and demonstrate that their beauty did not need White validation. Miss World, by contrast, demonstrated the limitations of a politics of representation, given how the pageant’s gesture at inclusion — inviting two contestants from South Africa — reinforced segregation and masked oppression under a thin veil of diversity.
Steadily, Black representation in pageants has increased. In 1984, Vanessa Williams became the first Black winner of Miss America. The progress continued until Black women won all four major titles for the first time in 2019. In 2021, three Black women won the major competitions of Miss USA (Elle Smith), Miss Earth (Destiny Wagner) and Miss Teen USA (Breanna Myles). Although by some measures this increase in Black representation demonstrates more diverse beauty standards and shifting categories of acceptance, it would be premature to suggest that the world is progressing toward an anti-racist society.