Performing Beauties, Endorsing Capitals: Repertoires of Beauty Evaluation and How They Mark Symbolic Boundaries and Shape Social Inequalities in Accra, Ghana

This study explores how judges and TV producers in "Ghana’s Most Beautiful" (GMB) pageant legitimize beauty cultures and endorse specific forms of capitals through their evaluative comments and how these shape symbolic boundaries and reinforce social inequalities in media-saturated societies such as Accra. The GMB pageant is a reality show that selects ladies each from the 16 regions of Ghana to showcase their talents on TV to redefine beauty and promote national unity. As one of the cultural products in Ghana, it promotes the idea that beauty is first of all a performance and a ‘must’ to be embodied by women. Drawing from Bourdieu’s concept of capital, Lamont’s theories of symbolic boundaries, and Kuipers’ beauty and inequality theoretical framework, this research examines how TV producers and judges’ evaluations recreate repertoires of beauty that favour contestants who effectively perform certain cultural and aesthetic roles in the GMB. Using ethnographic methods, involving interviews (with TV producers and judges); and six months observations (13 weeks live studio observation), this study found that the repertoires of physical beauty were not directly expressed in judges’ comments but embedded in the criteria for evaluation and selection. Also, through my observation, I discovered how different forms of capitals collectively transform into crowning a female as beauty queen – Ghana’s Most Beautiful – in three ‘stages’ (two different forms of front stage, middle stage and backstage), expanding Erving Goffman’s idea of performance on stages. This study revealed how beauty evaluations perpetuate inclusion and exclusion, privileging contestants who align with the identified forms of capitals. Lastly, this study has significantly identified that beauty is not merely judged on aesthetic grounds but also is a performance played and embodied by women in line with social expectations, contributing to the reproduction of symbolic boundaries and social inequalities in the Ghanaian context.