Cultural anthropologist Dewey explores the Miss India beauty pageant as a window into issues of beauty, power, and class in India. Her key themes are the power of the gaze, gender, and globalization. After exploring the experiences and perceptions of several recent pageant participants, she examines the month-long Miss India training program and its constructions of hierarchies of beauty and nationality. She then discusses the pageant as a space in the cultural landscape in which women's bodies become representations of the nation. Finally, she brings in the theme of globalization in chapters exploring the incorporation of "international standards" at the Miss India pageant (and the analogous incorporation of "international standards" following economic liberalization) and the way Sunsilk shampoo, sponsor of the 2003 pageant, uses its sponsorship to position itself as a marker of modernity in India. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)