Miss Congeniality

Miss Congeniality movie revolves around the FBI agent Gracie Harts who works undercover as Miss New Jersey with her team to protect the Miss United States Beauty Pageant from a possible terrorist attack.

Throughout the movie we can see a huge transformation in Gracie’s identity. At the very beginning Gracie seems to be very masculine in both her looks and her behavior. She doesn’t wear any make-up, doesn’t do her eyebrows, she doesn’t even brush her hair. Moreover, she is aggressive in everything she does, including eating, walking, and laughing. One of the ladies she meets at a bar asks her if the FBI forces all women over there to wear these “really masculine shoes”, and Gracie clarifies that its not the FBI, its her own personal choice. Moreover, her beauty pageant consultant for the mission, Victor Melling, compared her walk to the walk of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.



Gracie faces a hard time accepting her new assignment to work undercover as Miss New Jersey in the pageant. She gets a new look that shocks her colleagues, where she starts to look more feminine to others.




We can also see through the film how Gracie starts to socialize and learn the norms of this new culture she has to fit in. She takes the instructions from her adviser and watches video clips of beauty pageants and starts imitating the moves of the contestants.

At this stage Gracie’s front stage behavior is in the pageant trying to act more feminine, and her backstage behavior is with her team where she can act masculine, as she’s used to. However, as the time passes and through her interaction with the other girls in the pageant, Gracie seems to absorb more of these norms and attitudes and become more feminine overall, while maintaining some aspects of her original masculine identity, like power and independence.



Her transformation gets her the guy, her FBI colleague Eric Matthews, after she had really low chances in finding any guy who would be interested in her. This shows us how society as a social force puts a lot of pressure on individuals shaping their identities in order to have some of the things we desire, like a partner, which would be considered as positive sanctions for following the norms of the society for how we look and how we behave.

Following the Rules

When someone asks me where I'm from, my response is always the same. I say that I am Sudanese. I never lived in my home country, but I have visited several times. Despite living abroad my whole life, I never really had an identity or culture crisis because I was raised in a Sudanese household by my parents who both taught me everything I need to know about Sudanese culture and tradition. However, simply knowing about a culture was never enough to fit in with the people. I needed to obey the social norms of the society itself or else I would be labeled as a deviant.




The way I act, speak and dress is socially acceptable in Qatar, but all of this changes when I visit Sudan. I have to alter all of these social norms with the conformity of the culture, otherwise it would be regarded as deviance. In sociology, these types of norms that are known as folkways which are the "regular" ways to handle everyday habits. In Qatar my folkways are very different from when I am in Sudan. For example, I'm used to speaking English most of the time with my friends, but as soon as I'm around my family or other Sudanese I switch to my own colloquial Arabic. I also tend to dress differently and modestly by wearing a headscarf to abide with the culture and the people. Seldom would you find a Sudanese woman in Sudan not wearing a scarf. The headscarf is a symbol of religion, but the role of religion is so significant that it has influenced culture which makes it hard to distinguish between the two. What's interesting is that even women that are not Muslim wear the headscarf just so they can fit in because it's something that is expected of you as a woman. Here you can observe how people of a certain group that have a certain mentality, social belief and culture have used social control -methods that influence and indirectly force both "members and non-members, to comply with and not deviate from its norms and expectations." If anyone was found to violate any of these social rules, sanctions would be implemented. These can be formal sanctions that are supported by the law, or informal meaning that they can be given anyone in that society and are not supported by the law. Both these forms of sanctions can be negative or positive. An example of a negative informal sanction is when my grandmother giving me a long lecture about speaking Arabic more often because it's my mother tongue and that I'm becoming more of a western and less of an Arab. Dressing conservatively is required in Sudanese law; therefore if a someone is caught not dressed appropriately they would be dealt with the religious police.




Similarly to Sudan, Qatar is a Muslim and Arab country, but I don't apply these social norms because in the end it is not my culture. For example Qatari women wear the abaya in their home country but not necessarily when they travel. However, if I don't wear accordingly to tradition no one would care simply because I'm not Qatari and therefore these unwritten social rules do not apply to me. That is why when I'm not in Sudan I don't feel the need to follow the rules. This social pressure that I experience is a form of social control that forces me to dress accordingly modestly according to my culture, religion and family. In the end it is hard to agree on what is considered to be deviant behavior because each society establishes its own conformity that differ from each other, so what might be regarded as deviant in one society could be considered normal in another.

Can We Pause the Norms?

Can we ever say that it is “fine” to break the rules once a year in Doha? Probably yes. On the 18th of December, a maseera takes place annually in Doha, as a celebration to Qatar National Day. A maseera is a name given to the celebration of any big national event, and is usually held alongside the Corniche of Doha. Even though there are very strict rules and regulations regarding traffic violation, this day is considered open to the public. People would do what they normally wouldn’t do on the streets as it deviates away from the norms.



Let’s go back to last year’s maseera. A bunch of friends and I decided that we would actually join the people, and see for ourselves how the place looked like. So we all covered up very well, barely showing our faces, since you know, Qatar is a very small country, and people tend to talk a lot. The whole place around the corniche was decorated with the Qatari flag, representing nationalism.



There were those that showed some level of conformity when it came to road behavior, and others that completely deviated away from it. For instance, after picking up one of the girls, the driver forgot to lock the car doors. While we were stuck in the maseera celebrating inside the car, a random guy wearing a mask runs in the middle of the road heading towards our car, and just opens the door. This is an example of a deviated behavior, and obviously he got very negative sanctions from us. Some were screaming inside the car, and others represented an informal sanction; they just laughed. We did not expect such a behavior since it normally wouldn’t happen if it weren’t for the maseera.



Along with the car shows, some men decided that they would stop their car in the middle of the road, or have someone in the driver’s seat, put their music up loud, and start dancing in front of the car. To anyone, that wouldn’t seem as though it is following a culture’s norm. However, they got informal sanctions from the people around them, and they started laughing. They also got positive sanctions from the people, some even were video taping it. The only reason this is allowed is because this day is open to everyone, and they would usually not get violated for such acts, unless it is more than just a folkway.