"Gender discourses concerning the II World Championship of Female Football (1971) and the beauty pageant Miss Universe (1978)"

Supervisor: Dr. Gabriela Cano (Colmex)

From a historical perspective, this research is devoted to the study of gender tensions raised in two representative spectacles of mass culture, to say: the II World Championship of Female Football in 1971, and the beauty pageant Miss Universe 1978, multitudinous events held in Mexico, which were inscribed within a broader modernizing political project, as its primary function was to demonstrate to the international community a progressive and sophisticated image of the country. In this sense, there were various social actors who were interested in the development of these shows, in which the protagonists were young women whose performances showed a diversification of images of femininity, a situation that raised strong controversy between the Mexican government, national press, private initiative, feminist groups, as well as with the female soccer players and beauty contestants who staged these shows. Thus, from the study of the discussions between such actors, in this work I attempt to establish a link between the two spectacles, with the interest of contributing to explain the changes and resistances in the social order of gender in the Mexican context, at a time marked by a modernizing impetus of a contradictory reach.