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April 29, 1999
Last week, we saw a video instead of having a guest lecturer. The movie was on an Indian American beauty pageant that was held in the south. It was called “Miss India Georgia” and it followed four different teenage girls around for the preparation leading up to the contest day. Even though all four girls are Indian, they had completely different lifestyles and views towards life.
I like the part when they showed the different background that they lived in. It showed me what kind of friends they had, what kind of family they were brought up in, and basically, what kind of life they had. Since they are all from the south, it seemed obvious that they were the minority group. One of the girls had all white friends and she did all white activities. She was completely whitewashed. She even did a gymnastics routine in her talent show part of the show which was to promote Indian awareness. Another girl was very whitewashed as well. She had a white boyfriend and she had a very independent attitude. However, I noticed that not all the girls in the pageant were like that. The two other girls that they followed had very rich knowledge about their culture and they did a lot of things that were very traditional. I think that the discipline that the parents put on the child is important to see if their culture stuck with them or not in the long run. It was very interesting to hear what their ideal marriages would be. The very traditional girls tended to say that they wanted traditional marriages and the people who were Americanized replied that they wanted an American style wedding. After looking at this video, I was able to see how people’s culture and lifestyle is formed and what kinds of things were necessary to influence them to become that way.
