Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South

In a trio of popular gender rituals-sorority rush, beauty pageants, and the Confederate Pageant of the Natchez (Mississippi) Pilgrimage-young white southern women have readily ditched contemporary modes of dress and comportment for performances of purity, gentility, and deference. Clearly, the ability to "do" white southern womanhood, convincingly and on cue, has remained a valued performance.



Based on ethnographic research and more than sixty taped interviews, Southern Beauty goes behind th...