Remembering "the nation" through pageantry: Femininity and the politics of Vietnamese womanhood in the Hoa Hau Ao Dia contest

Frontiers, 2000 by Lieu, Nhi T

Organized in both northern and southern California in 1977, the first ao dai pageants were immediate cultural inventions. They were as much a response to the new Vietnamese government's imposition of a dress code on the South Vietnamese as they were an effort to preserve and claim the Vietnamese national dress. When the world of the elites and their "bourgeois decadence" collapsed in Vietnam during the mid 1970s and early 1980s, the status-laden ao dai also lost its position as the official national dress of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. On men, the ao dai was seen as representing the "old regime."15 On women, it represented the extravagance and futility associated with capitalist wastefulness. According to fashion freelancer Lan Vu, "the ao dai receded into the background, making appearances only at family gatherings and special occasions" after 1975 when "the Communists ordered everyone to wear the basic work outfit of buttoned top and pants."16 Though the Communist government never made it illegal to wear an ao dai, anyone caught wearing the garment risked surveillance that could even lead to home searches. Vietnamese immigrants remember that the Communist government made it very difficult for anybody to don the ao dai because it drew so much attention. For these reasons, the ao dai became a hidden material object shielded from public display. However, the more the Communist government seized the ao dai, the more overseas Vietnamese insisted on preserving their national dress along with other items of material culture, such as the old South Vietnamese flag, as national symbols of Vietnam. As in the period of decolonization when the ao dai, according to Van Ngan, became "a symbol of silent opposition to French colonialism," ao dai pageants became a symbol of Vietnamese American protest against the Communist forces that displaced it.17

Selecting the ao dai as the national symbol for the "imagined" Vietnam invokes both classed and gendered articulations of nationhood. The ao dai was the official wardrobe of Vietnamese elite men and women. The long and fluid dress accompanied by a pair of lengthy flowing pants not only requires superfluous lengths of cloth to produce, but each dress also requires custom tailoring. As such, the ao dai can be an expensive commodity to own. Working-class men and women could only afFord to don the ao dai for special occasions such as weddings, funerals, and holidays. Because Vietnamese immigrants brought the ao dai with them, it continues to make appearances at these same occasions throughout the diaspora. However, significantly more women than men wear ao dai. Throughout its history the ao dai for men remained fairly unchanged in style, and as Vietnamese men adopted Western styles of dress the men's ao dai almost entirely disappeared. Ao dai fashion for women, on the other hand, not only exhibited regional distinctions but also stylistic change over time. In the 1990s, many diasporic Vietnamese communities have witnessed the resurgence of ao dai fashion among younger Vietnamese American women. Though this may indicate that young Vietnamese American women are rediscovering their roots through the ao dai, community beauty pageants may have also contributed to the construction of this classed and gendered expression of ethnic and national identity.