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chapter three SHY GIRLS AND SHOW-OFFS DANCING LOCAL VALUES You know how Mary won Miss Cook Islands? Well, she is very special to us, very special to the Cook Islands. To me, she is what a woman should be. Mary is different from you and me. But she isn’t ‘akava‘ine [a show-off], you know. She is in all the advertising, in bikini and that, but if you see her at the beach, she wears shorts. She doesn’t drink. She hasn’t even had a boyfriend— well, I have never seen her with someone, or heard about anything. Both of the epigraphs above refer to a young woman, Mary (a pseudonym), whom many on Rarotonga considered to be a role model for other young women. The first statement was made by a middle-aged male drummer as we were watching a solo by Mary during a hotel dance performance. His observations referred, in a slightly prurient way, to her physical beauty but went beyond that to indicate her importance to “us,” meaning both the dance group and the Cook Islands as a whole. His remarks echoed academic arguments about the role of femininity in nationalist discourse (Yano 2006; Yuval-Davies 1997; Cohen, Wilk, and Stoeltje 1996b). As well as being physically attractive and an excellent dancer, Mary was perceived as embodying other ideal aspects of Cook Islands femininity: “She is what a woman should be,” a representative of group values deemed to be important. This final point is taken up in more detail in the second epigraph above, a comment made by a woman who lived in the same village as Mary. Although they were not friends, she admired aspects of Mary’s behavior, especially that Mary did not drink and was thought to be a virgin. Mary, this woman suggested, was either  96C8>CCCCCCCCCCC< AD86A K6AJ:H A group of friends wrote a letter attempting to show up the hypocrisy of the judging system: “If we care to remember the night of the pageant, Maire, by her own admission, told the public how they (herself included), the staff of the Westpac Banking Corporation, have a good time after work on a Friday night. If having a good time was a problem, why, then, didn’t those who chose to complain do so on the night when she won?” (CIN, April 23, 2001). Finally, on April 28, 2001, it was reported that Maire Brown, in consultation with the pageant committee, had resigned. It would seem that Maire Browne danced too much; she enjoyed going to clubs on the weekend, enjoyed a drink, and appreciated having a good time. Her case illustrates explicitly how dancing is linked to other forms of physical and moral comportment. Dancing too much rather than dancing to reflect ideal femininity and beauty can signify the opposite—female lacks and excesses. R   R   R Dance is a valued aspect of contemporary Cook Islands femininity. However, by dancing, Cook Islands women need to negotiate the potentially contradictory aspects of femininity—being ‘akamā and ‘akava‘ine. To be a good dancer is to overcome shyness and dance with assurance and poise. Yet distinguishing oneself too much can be interpreted as being above oneself, a show-off. Dance can present a problem for women, as it involves navigating between personal expression versus the sanction to conform and to represent aspects of Cook Islands group life. Obviously , personal desires need not always conflict with groupness; it is possible to dance both for personal status and as a representative of a group. Yet though the two may not necessarily conflict, individuals such as those participating in the Miss Cook Islands competition are quite aware that they are constantly negotiating between their personal desires and the demands of groups to which they may claim membership. They are also highly aware of the pitfalls that a disregard for group life can present. The Miss Cook Islands pageant is also an example of local reconstitution of a global institution. In it, the display of feminine beauty that pageants throughout the world perform is enmeshed with local notions of femininity—the display of “traditional” feminine virtues and skills such as speaking Māori and the ability to dance, sing, weave, and so on. Fundamentally, young women who participate in the pageant are valued for their representative role; they represent the nation, their family, and their village. They also present the Cook Islands as a paragon of feminine virtue. 8=6EI:G I=G::  That competitions such as the Miss Cook Islands pageant are hugely popular with locals suggests that the appropriation of the beauty pageant, as a global form, is largely successful. However, these pageants are also forums that display inherent tensions in the classificatory oppositions that structure Cook Islanders’ notions of gender and race. In relation to gender, notions of ‘akava‘ine and ‘akamā map out traditional/local Cook Islands femininity, which privileges community deference in contrast to the designation of papa‘ā/modern prioritization of individual desires. That those who possess this traditional cultural capital are also those with papa‘ā ancestry and are considered half-castes reveals the racialized nature of status and power relations—both past and present—that are entrenched in Cook Islands social life. At the same time that an event such as the Miss Cook Islands pageant is a process of local appropriation, it is also an instance of Cook Islanders being drawn into the global arena. As Wilk (1995, 111) in his study of beauty pageants in Belize argues, the opposition between global homogeneity and local appropriation is a false dichotomy. He suggests that “in the process of absorbing the beauty pageant into a local context, Belizeans have also been absorbed into global contest” (ibid.). Similarly, Cook Islanders’ engagement with global flows creates complex entanglements that cannot be simply seen at either local or global, traditional or modern, but rather can be seen as a dynamic combination of the two. Displays of femininity are both cosmopolitan and oriented outward; they are concurrently inwardly oriented and replete with local aspirations. ...

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