Frumuseţea în slujba naţiunii: Nadejda Oculici de Kosarini şi primele concursuri „Miss România”
Beauty in the Service of the Nation: Nadejda Oculici of Kosarini and the Firsts “Miss România” Beauty Pageants

Summary/Abstract: In 1929, the first national beauty pageants open to all young women were held in the Kingdom of Romania. Although their organizers, the largest and most read newspapers and illustrated magazines of the day, nominally wanted to identify and celebrate the country’s most beautiful women, the first “Miss Romania” contests were not grounded solely on esthetic, artistic, or noble aspirations, but more visibly on the imperative of political representation and national duty. In other words, the title of “Miss Romania” had to be bestowed upon a “real” Romanian woman, a true daughter of her country that could represent her people with pride and decency in the “Miss Universe” international beauty pageant held in Galveston, USA. This article aims to sketch the difficult and sinuous mediation between the esthetic dimension and the political desideratum of finding the proper way to represent the nation through the modern cultural medium of national beauty pageants. The efforts made by the organizers to elect a national beauty queen can best be understood by dispelling the historical shadows that envelop the story of a young woman of Russian descent, Nadejda Oculici de Kosarini, who played an essential role in the first two editions of the Romanian competition organized by the weekly magazine “Realitatea Ilustrată”. The paper argues that ideological and not artistic rationales led to the selection of the first “Miss Romania” title winner and that these same rationales also prompted Nadejda de Kosarini to leave for Galveston in 1930 as the first representative of the community of Russian exiles that fled their homeland in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution. Thus, femininity and feminine beauty were instrumentalized for political and nationalistic goals that reveal the dominant cultural climate of 1920s-1930s Romania.

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