"Loveliest daughter of our ancient Cathay!": representations of ethnic and gender identity in the Miss Chinatown U.S.A. beauty pageant

This emphasis on physical appearance placed psychological and emotional burdens on the contestants. In preparing for the competition, entrants experienced subtle and overt pressures to alter their physical appearance through cosmetics, dieting, and even plastic surgery. This emphasis on viewing women as sexual objects may have led to more abusive forms of behavior, such as sexual harassment. Celeste Wong remembered that "alot of the people who directed the activities in Chinatown were older men who took advantage of the situation. . . . You'd be in a taxi or car with somebody and all of a sudden you'd feel a hand slipping under your dress." Her sponsor, the Holiday Inn hotel, provided her with a white male escort and required her to attend various functions to promote their business projects. Once, when the Holiday Inn flew her to Memphis for the opening of a hotel, her escort reserved only one room for both of them. Only sixteen years old at the time, Wong responded to these advances by ignoring them or escaping from the situations. However, she did not have the words or confidence to expose the treatment she received. Wong later interpreted these incidents as a result of the beauty pageant, which encouraged young women to present themselves as physically desirable. The sexual harassment "had to do with the contest and had to do with being a young woman who's supposed [to] just win based on what you looked like." The men who harassed her translated the accessibility of her body image for commercial and cultural purposes as an accessibility of her body for their sexual purposes.(24)

In addition to exposing the personal and psychological effects of beauty pageants, community activists also criticized the pageant for promoting an elite image of Chinese American women. Because the competition sought to highlight educated, accomplished, poised, and beautiful Chinese American women, critics considered the image of contestants "bourgeois." They argued that "most of the contestants come from wealthy and influential backgrounds and know very little about Chinatown, the ghetto." Because the competition sought to present "the most 'beautiful' Chinese women in their fine clothes and just perfect make-up, pranc[ing] around the stage," critics did not consider this image as representative of Chinese American women. They pointed out that "the majority of Chinese women are hard-working, either with jobs or full-time family responsibilities, and in most cases it's both. They are not women of leisure and their 'beauty' is not in their 'made-up, worked on for hours' physical outward appearance." Instead of promoting exceptional women as representative of Chinese American womanhood, critics sought further recognition of the problems facing women as workers and family members.(25)

Activists preferred to promote an image of Chinese American women as protesters of injustice. Challenging the CCC's portrayal of Chinese culture as passive and non-revolutionary, the critics pointed to the growing militancy of women in Chinatown and throughout the Third World. Just as some Chinatown publications regularly featured women from beauty contests, papers with more liberal and radical agendas emphasized women's activism in movements for social justice. For example, articles in the latter papers frequently covered the struggles of garment workers, striking for better working conditions and wages. The photographs of middle-aged women holding picket signs represented a dramatic departure from the images of young women in cheong-sams and make-up. Community members concerned about working women's issues also began celebrating International Women's Day in Chinatown during this time period. Occurring in early March, this annual event could be interpreted as a symbolic alternative to the Miss Chinatown U.S.A. beauty pageant, which usually took place in late January or February.