The discreet charm of beauty pageants in the 1970s

Abstract

Based on historical assumptions and commonplaces about the character of the Portuguese, “luso-tropicalism” was a way to imagine the Portuguese community that tended to highlight the natural disposition of the Portuguese for a settlement without prejudice of “color or race”. Even when the “winds of change” seemed to announce the end of the Portuguese empire, a series of media spectacles continued to reproduce luso-tropicalism in mass culture. One of those spectacles was the Miss Portugal contest, which included competitors from all over Portuguese overseas provinces between 1971 and 1974, thus recreating the imaginary map of the Portuguese community.