Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South by Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd (review)

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• Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South by Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd
• Misti Nicole Harper

Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South. By Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2022. Pp. xviii, 191. Paper, $30.95, ISBN 978-0-8203-6232-8; cloth, $120.95, ISBN 978-0-8203-6231-1.)

“What sort of trauma has their frivolity obscured?” (p. 146)—Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd’s question drives her investigation of why the ideal of “the southern beauty figure” continues to endure into the twenty-first century after decades of radical social changes that destabilized white supremacy through the civil rights movement, feminism, and multiculturalism (p. xi). In Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South, Boyd dismantles the figure of the southern belle turned southern lady. She traces the evolution of a potent symbol of an “imagined place and golden time when their [white people’s] interests were in favor and their privilege intact” (p. 33). The southern beauty is also wielded as an effective political weapon that suffocates further social progress by standing in for white southerners who relish reinforcing conservative, Eurocentric notions of femininity, heteronormativity, sexual [End Page 651] belonging, race, and class for the modern era. Boyd’s analysis of how the southern beauty and her political meaning remain relevant turns sorority rush, beauty pageants, and Old South spectacles into battlefields where white girls and women compete for physical and social validation, and where they defend the myths through which the southern beauty was first elevated.

Boyd’s study shines like sequins on the gown of a Miss America contestant. Her first chapter, “Sister Act,” considers the rituals of exclusion during sorority rush at the University of Alabama and the University of Mississippi. In their bids for social relevance, coeds subject themselves to an intense scrutinization of their lineage and looks—all of which “reinscribe notions of race, region, and social place” (p. 5). Selecting new pledges hinges on a labyrinth of unspoken but understood rules of achievement and behavior that belie Greek organizations’ insistence that any young woman may join. Despite some notable attempts from white Greeks to dismantle discrimination, Boyd affirms that implicit tenets continue to prefer southern pledges (“Pity the poor Yankee”!), reject women whose personal styles do not conform to type, and defer to white patriarchy by favoring white candidates (p. 63). One member defended their racism by stating, “If we had a Black girl . . . none of the fraternities would want anything to do with us” (p. 56). With rare exception, Boyd notes, a culture of decorum polices middle- and upper-class white women who comply so that they may be assured of social connections, good marriages, and privileges for the rest of their lives. Most of these women are content to perpetuate harm for the prize of being regarded as a proper southern beauty.

Similar politics dictate the world of southern pageants. These spectacles remain uniquely valued in a region where beauty is big business and where beauty winners can also earn social mobility. In her second chapter, “Miss Demeanor,” Boyd argues that the local and state pageant circuits that season hopefuls for the major contests, such as Miss America, pivot on adherence to an unapologetic Christianity, to unyielding traditional femininity, and to the feat of appearing humble in a hyperambitious space and are definitively white spaces where occasional Black or brown beauty queens are othered.

Boyd’s crowning achievement, however, is her third chapter, “Hoop Dreams,” which investigates how the Natchez Garden Club of Natchez, Mississippi, and its supporters have propagated regional mythology and white supremacist history through its Confederate Pageant, which has run since 1931. In this section, Boyd illuminates two essential points—the lore of the southern beauty has extracted millions of tourist dollars and has also enabled white women to control historical memory, social norms, and political ideals. Boyd thoughtfully explores how white southern women shrewdly use the white-constructed image of a southern lady as a foil to control the modern South.

Misti Nicole Harper University of North Carolina at Pembroke Copyright © 2024 The Southern Historical Association ...