Do reinado ao legado na arte transformista no Miss Brasil Gay Juiz de Fora: uma etnografia do campo

Abstract

This thesis investigates Miss Gay Brazil and the appearances that surround the event. The pageant, conceived by hairdresser Chiquinho Mota in 1977 in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, has been ongoing for over forty years, electing the most beautiful gay transformer in the country. Misses from the twenty-six Brazilian states plus the Federal District present themselves in typical costumes and evening gowns, highlighting regional aspects of each region linked to an idea of femininity. As such, its institutionalization has been noticed through the years, promoting the institution of regional commissions, regulations and even its patrimonialization in 2007 by the municipality. Therefore, I perceive Miss Brazil as a field, with its own rules, where the dispute for recognition and the construction of identities are central. The demand for stylized practices that are increasingly specific to the group has molded the trajectory of transforming artists and contributed to the history of the LGBTQIAPN+ community. In this way, I seek to understand what I define as the Miss Gay Brazil Juiz de Fora field, which is made up of four figures: costume designers, misses, the organization and the public, seeking to understand how these subjects articulate their appearances according to social markers. In addition, I intend to recover the history of the contest through the life stories of the people involved, which make it possible to understand an artistic and cultural production that is relevant to the history of the Brazilian LGBTQIAPN+ community. To undertake the research, I used many different methodologies, including direct observation, photography, field diaries, semi-structured interviews and content made available by the agents themselves on their social platforms. I also looked at literature on LGBTQIAPN+ history in Brazil, fashion, queer, feminist and gender studies, as well as visual culture, heritage and memory. Finally, I conclude that the competition has contributed to 1) developing, disseminating and preserving Brazilian transformative art, constituting a subculture that has contributed to the construction of histories, territories and its own institutional and hierarchical structure of distinction; 2) transformative art helped to bring together people who identified themselves as sexual dissidents, but also marked a resistance to other (cis and hetero) normative standards of living, mobilizing concerns and reflections - albeit involuntary - in the spaces where they lived, giving rise to new political and artistic actions; 3) and finally, they produced a memory through glamour as a political instrument, since it was what was available to them to narrate their own stories, given that the symbols, signs and other institutionalized apparatuses of political and public life were not always accessible to these people.