All beauty pageants seem to follow the same pattern: women parade on a catwalk in various outfits and are watched and judged against the ideal of beauty which happens to dominate that particular culture at that moment in time. This video takes us to the Chinese Miss Vancouver pageant of 1997 and we see images of women dressed in the traditional 'cheong-sam'. The regional winner will go to Hong Kong to compete in the Chinese Miss World contest. The images are from a live television show where viewers could call in their votes from home. Paul Wong was one of the pageant judges. The sugary sweet images of this specific, idealized world are contrasted with fragments of stories told by a number of Chinese Canadians from 'other' worlds. There the ideals of Miss Vancouver Chinatown carry little weight and we see/hear fragments of stories by a transvestite, a drug addict, divorcees and by people who discuss the different ethnic backgrounds of their families. They often talk simultaneously while the pageant goes on in the background, and they portray a multicultural society in the very different ways they see their own sexuality and the history of their families and the world. It turns out that their Chinese descent often was a mixed blessing at best. One woman relates a tragic aspect of her grandmother's life: she had spent her life pretending to be someone she wasn't. This touches upon the question of her own identity, a question that concerns us all, in all places, in all ages.
– Carla Hoekendijk
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Camera: Ruth Chang, Editing: Wayne Yung, Sound: Jennifer Pickord
Paul Wong ° 1955, Prince Rupert (Canada)
Lives and works in Vancouver (Canada)
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