The Pacific National Exhibition, or PNE, is a landmark annual event that has been running in Vancouver for over 100 years, since 1910. In 1948, the exhibition began a new annual event: the Miss PNE Pageant, which ran until 1991. The Pageant brought women from municipalities across British Columbia to compete, creating a province-wide trend of beauty pageants in small towns. Abbotsford was one of such towns that would come to join the competition and will be the focus of this website.
Although Abbotsford would join the PNE Pageant in 1955, Abbotsford would keep their own Pageant going for another five years after the PNE’s ended in 1991. Abbotsford women competed for forty-one years and contributed hours of their free time in preparation for the pageant and being involved in local events after the fact. The world of the Miss Abbotsford (and Miss PNE) Pageant was a dedicated one, and we will go into finer detail in other sections of this history.
As referenced by the definition at the start, beauty pageants have not aged well in the societal context. Pitting women against each other for the approval of a group of judges, often mostly male, does not sound any better in practice than it does on paper. The goal of this is not to make an argument for beauty pageants, however as we will see, nor is it to completely condemn an event that so many women put hundreds and thousands of hours into for their own sake. There is more to say on this topic than one might predict, as we will soon see. From a personal perspective, the outcome of this project was not what I was expecting it to be.
Therefore, I would like to address the messy elements of contemporary beauty pageants. One of the main reasons we (the grand “we”) see beauty pageants as an explicitly bad thing is because of the American beauty pageant industry. Images come to mind of Honey Boo Boo and other reality-tv shows that are clearly reinforcing a strict notion of femininity upon girls at a very young age, and the semi-abusive encouragement they receive from their parents to participate. Reinforcing the notion of “beauty” as a competition, creating unhealthy beauty standards for young girls, the list goes on. We are not wrong to conclude that beauty pageants are a bad thing, especially considering the ages of the participants.
With that being said, the Miss PNE Pageant had young women from the age of seventeen to nineteen participating. The teen-aged state is hard to define, not quite a child, yet not quite an adult. Society has had a difficult time reckoning with what to do with these people, as their bodies, opinions, values, and beliefs are frequently changing. The transition into adulthood can be difficult, and society frequently tries to find ways to help that transition along; it’s debateable whether these methods happen too early or too late. Either way, it’s an important and impressionable phase of life.
These Pageants were actively encouraging girls to become more involved in their communities and to pursue higher education. It could be argued the pageants were part of this process of becoming an adult, providing opportunities for women that may have lacked them, though let’s not forget there was only one winner that would receive the prizes.
As a male individual, I make no claims to understanding becoming an adult from a female perspective. Thusly, I have put great care into the framing of the information collected on this website. I do not want to make light of the work put into these pageants by the women who cared about it, nor do I want to pretend that these events were perfect and unproblematic; that’s not the purpose of history. What is more valuable is the rich history of this pageant and those that participated in it.
So: what will be discussed? This website will be divided into sections, as follows.
First, the information describing the Pageants themselves.
- The Application and Preparation Process
- What did the participants do to apply? This section will discuss the events leading up to the pageant, such as application forms, the preparation of one’s performance, and community events that led up to the Miss PNE Pageant.
- The Miss PNE Pageant and Miss Abbotsfords
- Since this was the main event, we will discuss it’s process as well, much akin to the previous section. On top of that, we will also discuss how the participants competed: speeches, fashion events, pre-show social events, and more.
- How many times did Miss Abbotsford take home the Miss PNE award? What were the rewards for the young women that won, and what did they do with the rewards?
- Post-Pageant Obligations
- The young women that won also had obligations in Abbotsford after their participation, which will be elaborated upon.
These sections will provide the background of what took place at these pageants. Then, a few questions from an analytical perspective. I hope to provide context into the cultural position the pageant held, along with its shortcomings. In what ways could the pageant have been improved? Considering its shortcomings, how could it have improved? These questions will be answered in the following sections:
- A Pageant for All?
- Was this a pageant for all young women to participate in? Research has provided limited information to aid in this question, but I believe that any discussion of it is still necessary. Were the pageants necessarily reinforcing body standards? Were most contenders and winners of the pageant of a specific racial/ethnic group? The answers to these questions are not conclusive, due to a lack of conclusive evidence, but there is enough information found through research to warrant discussion.
- The Final Years of the Miss Abbotsford Pageant
- As mentioned earlier, the Miss Abbotsford Pageant went for five years after the end of the Miss PNE Pageant. Just before it’s end, there were plans proposed to change the name of the pageant and re-evaluate its values to create something more akin to a community role-model program. Unfortunately, it ended shortly thereafter. The final section will discuss this plan, and whether it was effective in meeting it’s goals.
- Conclusion and Critique
- This will be a conclusion to the website, just as the title suggests, but it will also further discuss why pageants have, for the most part, ended. No spoilers here!