The Community Development of Male Homosexual Fan Club toward Beauty Queen Pageant: From Miss Siam to Miss Universe Thailand

Abstract

This research article will attempt to explain the changes in the national beauty pageants’ audiences through different eras, starting from the Miss Siam (Nang Sao Siam), Miss Thailand (Nang Sao Thai), right up to the Miss Universe Thailand pageant, based on the concept of fans and fandom, which aims to describe the affections towards the beauty queens, and the concept of identity and gender bias which aims to describe about self and gender roles. The research is conducted using mixed qualitative research methods, which include documentary researches, key informant interviews, and participatory observations by the researcher, as part of the data together with using autoethnography which focus on the researcher’s reflection on his self identity and the researched as being a part of the presentation, in order to study the development of dedicated beauty pageant male homosexuals fans. The results of the research, based on the order of the formation of audiences with characteristics of “Preferences”, “Fans”, and “Fan Club”, may be classified into 3 eras; namely, “From being Flowers of the Nation to the Male’s Entertainment”, “From being a Recipient to being an individual fan of Male Homosexuality”, and “From being an individual fan into the Male Homosexuality Fan Club”. In the era of Miss Siam (Nang Sao Siam), the beauty queen was a personal public relation tool for promoting the Constitution, with the main fans consisting of mostly males, making beauty pageants of that particular era being renowned as “institutes for producing mistresses” for the social elite males. Although males that are fans of beauty queens still exist today, but the number has been significantly reduced. The main factor that has contributed to this decline is the image projected by the present-day beauty queens, in which they have evolved into “extraordinary women”, which contradicts the preferences of most male recipients who prefer females based on “natural beauty standards” (ordinary women). However, the “extraordinary women” are consistent with the tastes of individual fans and homosexual male fans, which is one of the variables that has united individual and male homosexual fans to evolved into the second era. During this era, evidence has been found regarding the entry of “preferences” who are similar to male homosexuals as individual fans. Presently, there still exists this particular group of fans due to the desire to maintain the power to consume beauty queen substances in which they are particularly interested in while ignoring any interest in joining the main stream fan clubs. The study also discovered restrictions on accessing the internet, as well as economic and time limitations, in entering the online and physical fan club areas. Most individuals are also unaware of the social gatherings of these fans. The third era saw the integration of homosexual males, from being individual fans and developing into “fan clubs” during the era of the Miss Universe Thailand pageant, with an important variable being the advent of the internet and the desire to form a group to create a sense of being of the same group (we-feeling) and having the same preferences (camaraderie), and the use of the beauty queen text as a space to communicate gender identity that they desire as the beauty queen represents a “Proxy War”.