Beauty pageants are big business in Nigeria. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and discursive analysis of print and visual material, this talk examines how Nigerian beauty contests are transformed by multiple stakeholders into contested vehicles for promoting complex ideas about gender and power, ethnicity and belonging, and a rapidly changing articulation of Nigerian nationhood. I theorize beauty diplomacy as a tactic used to redeem Nigeria's poor reputation, by positioning beauty contestants - young, upwardly mobile, and ambitious women - as the aesthetic center of an ethnically diverse nation and the public face of a country on the economic rise.
​