“Look how gorgeous she is.
I mean, compared to the car wreck she was before.”
When a terrorist threat forces FBI agent Gracie Hart
to become the beauty queen no one ever thought she could be,
“What, are you kidding? It’s Hart.”
her transformation is framed as an uplifting tale
of self-discovery and female bonding.
“This experience has been one of the most rewarding and,
liberating experiences of my life.”
But looking back, some of the film’s messages
are less than inspirational:
Looks are prioritised over personality, workplace harassment goes unchallenged,
and there’s an implication that, since you can’t beat
misogynistic gender norms, you might as well join them.
These toxic takeaways in fact aged so poorly
that the sequel,
Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous,
tried to rectify them a few years later.
Still, there’s a lot that this movie gets right
that explains why it still holds a place in our hearts:
it champions female friendships,
“We've become really good friends.”
stresses the importance of having priorities outside of work,
“Because I am the job.”
and encourages women to stand up for themselves.
“Sir, I request permission to stay behind with
a small contingent of agents.”
“Denied.”
“Then I request permission to stay behind alone.”
Here’s our take on the mixed messages
of Miss Congeniality, and the legacy of
this reluctant beauty queen over 20 years later.
Workplace sexism is rampant in Miss Congeniality,
and the film does acknowledge that this is a problem.
It shows that Gracie’s hard work goes unnoticed,
her boss directly denies her expertise,
“Wouldn’t my time be better spent
working on the Citizen case?”
“Not in my opinion”
“I have a very strong background in profiling and decoding.”
“Forget it!”
and male co-workers receive credit for her strategic planning.
“I think we need to get somebody in there.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah! Now I'm thinkin’...
undercover.”
“Good idea, boss.”
Miss Congeniality goes to great lengths
to show us that male-dominated fields
can create a culture of locker room talk,
“Ooh I love my job!”
“That’s not a bad view, eh?”
“No, not at all!”
and encourages us to empathise with Gracie's struggles to fit in.
So it often feels like the film is making a point
— or about to make one —
about the nature of boy’s clubs,
“I really feel that the situation bears further scrutiny
and our... and our continued presence
here at the pageant.”
“What are you, deaf? You just got paint in the ears!”
but unfortunately, it never follows through
on that commentary.
Gracie’s “happy ending” of earning respect at work
“That was good work.”
comes through bending to her coworkers’ value system,
by looking and acting the way they think a woman should,
and there’s no implication that her male colleagues’ misogyny
needs any comeuppance or significant changing.
In the scene where male FBI agents literally
throw food at pictures of women they find ugly,
the film cues audience laughter with upbeat music,
and even shows Gracie joining in.
(EWW, Ohhhhh)
And the film muddies whatever message it might
have been trying to send about toxic work culture
by making those same workplace harassers
heroes that we’re rooting for.
The romantic lead, Benjamin Bratt’s Eric Mathews,
spends the film hitting on almost every woman
he comes across,
“You ever seen one this big? Sandwich, I mean.”
showing them little respect as human beings,
and refusing to take no for an answer.
When he falls for Gracie, he claims that it’s because
of her personality, not her appearance,
“You’re smart, you’re funny, you’re easy to talk to
when you’re not armed.”
but this is difficult to believe.
Before she gets a makeover, Eric derides Gracie’s appearance,
“By the way, you look like hell.”
and suggests she’s not a “real” woman.
“Gracie, I would love to get a woman’s point of view.”
“Oh, no no no, Beth,
you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
So even if the movie implies that perhaps he
does like her personality all along, it’s clear he feels he
can’t act on this until she meets his standards
of female attractiveness.
“Hold on a second, that’s not bad.”
At the end, the kiss of this evidently
insecure and superficial man who has sexually harassed her
at work multiple times
“You tighten this up, you could pull this off.”
is Gracie’s ultimate prize.
There’s a sense that Gracie’s romantic and professional lives
were missing this male validation.
“Just a casual dinner.”
“Huh.”
“We happen to have sex afterwards, so be it.”
And instead of challenging his sexist views
or suggesting he needs to learn a lesson,
“And I’m suddenly very aware and proud
of my breasts.” “That’s funny,
me too.”
the narrative rewards Eric
with a beautiful girlfriend who fulfills the male fantasy
of the “cool girl” — someone with the tastes
and interests of your male best buddy,
in an effortlessly hot female package.
If boys will be boys, the movie tells us,
girls need to learn how to cater to those boys.
In the opening childhood flashback, a young Gracie learns the hard lesson
that a little boy doesn’t want her to rescue him,
“Now everybody thinks I need a girl to fight for me.”
and at first this scene seems to make the point
that it’s sad our world doesn’t value strong women.
Yet the lesson the movie ultimately seems to
draw from this vignette is that women have to figure out
it doesn’t pay to emasculate a man
by acting too much like one.
“You call me a girl?”
“You called me one!”
Essentially, the film’s approach to sexism is that it’s inevitable
so women might as well just play along,
look pretty and act like a “conventional woman”
in order to avoid drama and setbacks.
Relatedly, the film sends the toxic takeaway that:
Conforming to gender roles will make you happy.
From a feminist perspective Gracie’s initial defiance of
patriarchal norms might be considered impressive:
she is physically strong, doesn’t censor herself,
“I get these made special by the guy that put
the tattoo on my ass.”
doesn’t worry about her weight,
“Ohh, you’re starting early today, no?”
“Yeah, I’m gonna get chip-faced.”
and doesn’t let men tell her what to do.
“We have more to do here.”
“No, we are finished.”
“We're finished.”
However her lack of femininity is not presented as
positive within the film.
Along with Gracie’s FBI coworkers, we’re subtly encouraged to laugh at
or pity her masculine behaviors
“I was distracted by the half-masticated cow
rolling around in your wide-open trap.”
and unkempt appearance
“Do all the women in the Bureau have to wear those
really masculine shoes?”
“Oh, no.”
When her masculine-presenting tendencies aren’t played as a joke,
“What are you going to do to my teeth?”
“Hopefully remove the beer stains and steak residue.”
they’re essentially framed as a character flaw —
vaguely associated with her stubbornness
and resistance to being a team player
“I realize I didn't exactly follow orders…
“Exactly follow orders? There's no such thing.
You follow orders or you don't follow orders.”
all of which Gracie must overcome to achieve happiness.
Interestingly, the film asks us to believe that,
before her makeover, Gracie
(despite being played by Sandra Bullock)
isn’t beautiful due to her disregard
for the performance of traditional femininity.
The film equates female attractiveness
in Gracie’s society with trying to look attractive —
through typical patriarchal signifiers of female beauty like
form-fitting dresses, makeup, practicing poise
and elegant movement, and a thin figure achieved
through intensive dieting.
Gracie eschewing these things
“I don’t even own a dress. I don’t even own a brush!”
tells us she’s not good-looking.
Since Gracie doesn’t have even the most basic knowledge
about makeup,
“I wonder which one of these is the lipstick?”
there’s even a suggestion that she lacks beauty
because she doesn’t know how to obtain it.
If we’re being honest, after the makeover there actually
isn’t that major a change in her appearance.
While she looks great, the feeling of transformation
is heightened by other characters’ over-the-top reactions
“Hart, is that you?”
Gracie’s change isn’t really from unpretty to pretty,
but from a woman who doesn’t wear makeup
to one who removes all the hair from her body.
She has embraced conventional gender expression
and trying to be pretty; it’s this choice to subscribe
to femininity that makes her beautiful,
and therefore acceptable in her society’s eyes.
“When I met you, Dennis Rodman looked
better in a dress.
But … but now you're a lady!”
Most disappointingly, the feminist independence
and defiance of gender norms that Gracie displays
at the beginning of the film
“It’s like feminism never even happened, you know?”
are revealed to not be founded on moral beliefs
but on insecurity.
“I don’t have breasts, my thighs — I should wear a muumuu,
really.
Look, I have been avoiding this experience my entire life.”
Her issues with beauty contests
“I think any woman to do this is catering to
a misogynistic neanderthal mentality.”
apparently stem from a place of self-doubt,
because after her transformation she denies that
the pageant is demeaning in any way.
“There are many who consider the Miss United States pageant to be...
outdated and antifeminist.
What would you say to them?”
“I would have to say I used to be one of them.”
Here the film portrays Gracie — and many feminist women —
in a condescending light, playing into
the Straw Feminist trope ( a cartoonish portrayal
of a feminist that’s there to be mocked
or have her flimsy arguments easily dismissed).
Miss Congeniality implies that anyone who finds
something to criticize about beauty pageants
must be doing so out of ignorance or jealousy.
And it paints Gracie’s makeover as a gift.
“I never thought anything like this would ever happen to me.”
“I’m very honoured.”
At the beginning of the film Gracie is clearly feeling unfulfilled.
“Rough day, huh?”
“The worst.”
And while this may be in large part due to problems
with her culture, the solution to those problems
turns out to be fixing her; once she goes with the flow
of the norms she has been resisting,
she finally begins to feel happy.
And her success is directly linked with her adoption
of gender roles.
She’s allowed to be a winner,
as long as her victory doesn’t challenge
the patriarchal status quo.
“You’d be an important member of the undercover team.”
“Yeah right, in a thong.”
Essentially, Miss Congeniality suggests the best way
to respond to living in a toxic patriarchal society
is to become beautiful.
“Have you no pride in yourself,
in your presentation?”
Similar to the way that sexism is dealt with
within the film, homophobia is vaguely
acknowledged as bad, but is also presented
as funny depending on the situation.
Eric is consistently homophobic towards Victor
“Listen to me, you old fruitcake.”
which not only remains unchallenged,
but is also used as a joke whenever he is made uncomfortable
by Victor’s interest in him.
“Actually, I’m gonna take a rain check,
I’ve got a lot of FBI stuff I gotta take care of.”
Rigid gender roles are again reinforced
when Eric is humiliated by his co-workers using FBI software
to put a digital dress onto his body.
When Karen, Miss New York,
comes out on stage,
“I just want to let all the lesbians out there know,
if I can make it to the top ten, so can you!”
she is instantly silenced.
“Get her off of there!”
But aside from a fairly distasteful joke
“Can we say lesbians?”
“You got a problem with that?”
and a brief moment of Gracie showing support,
this protest is quickly dropped.
The film deals with other societal problems
like eating disorders in much the same way:
mentioning them,
“She’s going to throw it up anyway.”
but not really caring enough to follow up,
deal with them, or insist on structural change.
Still, the movie counters this unfortunate message
with the meaningful one that: women should support (all) women.
Gracie is wrong to dismiss
the women in the beauty pageant,
“What could possibly motivate anybody to enter
a beauty pageant is beyond me.”
and a key tenant of Miss Congeniality
is that women should support women,
including those who don’t necessarily share
your exact tastes and values.
Gracie originally judges and belittles the pageant contestants,
mainly because they’ve embraced their traditionally
feminine attractiveness — which she assumes
equates with not having smarts or depth.
“Well, my roommate’s asleep, or she’s starting to mold.”
But just as it’s wrong for her coworkers to dismiss her
for seeming too masculine,
“What, is it, like, a woman thing?”
“Don't kid yourself. Nobody thinks of you that way.”
it’s equally unfair and damaging
to condemn women who choose to present
as hyperfeminine.
By the end of the film Gracie regrets assuming
that the other women were vapid just because
they didn’t make her choices, and she respects them
for all the ways they are similar
and different from her.
“These women are smart, terrific people
who are just trying to make a difference in the world.”
Overcoming her bias rewards Gracie with what the movie
underlines is the best prize of all:
genuine female friendships.
“Hey, I got you something.”
“What is it?”
“Oh. Oh! Oh I couldn't.”
“Oh no, you can, you ate pizza, you stole panties,
you're a wild woman.”
The best evidence that female friendships are
at the heart of this film lies in its title:
the women present Gracie with the title “Miss Congeniality,”
literally defining her as a supportive friend.
“The nicest, sweetest, coolest girl at the pageant.”
But the movie’s idea of what being a great friend
to other women means entails more than just acceptance
or superficial amiability;
what makes Gracie so “congenial” is actually that she channels
the ferocity at the core of her being in order to
protect her friends
“If anyone, anyone, tries to hurt one of
my new friends I would take them out.”
and help them push to be their strongest possible selves.
“I think you have as good a chance as anybody to win.
I mean you obviously believe enough in yourself
to have gotten this far right?”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
The film also gets another crucial message right:
that we should believe women who open up about assault.
When Cheryl confides in Gracie about her assault,
“Anyway, he attacked me.”
she reveals that she has never told anybody else,
addressing the very real fear that women have about coming forward.
She then goes on to minimize her experience,
also a realistic portrayal of a common trauma response
among survivors,
“I know that kind of thing happens all the time.”
but this does not stop Gracie from believing her.
“There’s like, so many maneuvers
I could show you.”
“Really?!”
The exchange inspires Gracie to teach all of
the women at the pageant, and those viewing at home,
how to defend themselves.
“And I believe that no woman should be without
at least a basic knowledge of-of self-defense.”
It's an empowering scene, where Gracie reclaims her strength
and inspires other women to do the same.
On top of this, the audience goes wild
for her ability to fight, creating a key moment in the film
in which a woman’s strength is valued and respected.
“Wow, she’s kicking his ass.
Look at this.”
Gracie also learns the important message that:
“I don’t have friends because I work 24/7.”
Gracie is a textbook workaholic, and her passion for her job
is her whole identity.
“All I want to do is my job.”
She’s eager to help in anyway she can,
spends her free time working on skills
that will improve her job performance,
and even outfits her personal car for work.
Though her devotion is admirable, it leaves little time
and energy for anything else, and her life is devoid
of meaningful relationships.
“In place of friends and relationships you have sarcasm and a gun.”
Gracie tries to hide her insecurities
about her lack of social life, but it’s clear that
its absence affects her.
“I date, I go on dates, I know everyone thinks
I haven’t had a date in about 10 years…
but you know both times it was totally screwed up.”
It isn’t until she starts to connect with other people
that she can reach her full potential,
in terms of both her personal happiness
and her job.
“For the first time in my life I feel like I’m in the
right place at the right time
and I have to protect those girls.”
After the mistakes of Miss Congeniality,
the film’s sequel aimed to right some of its wrongs
five years later.
Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous
opens with Gracie being dumped by Agent Mathews,
“Well, I thought we were moving at kind of a normal pace,
I don’t need any more space.”
and becoming obsessed with her appearance
as a way to cope.
The film criticizes her superficiality by showing that it’s taken away
some of her most loveable qualities.
“What you could do is just pull your hair up
every once in a while, it would really open up your face
because remember people care about
people who care about themselves.”
The rest of the film focuses on her rediscovering
her deeper self and her independence,
by returning to her strength and rebellious attitude.
“For the first time in a long time,
you feel like the real Gracie Hart.”
It also follows her newfound friendship with Sam,
an agent who is as outcast as Gracie was
at the start of the first movie.
But significantly, the narrative never asks Sam
to change or give up her conventionally
masculine qualities;
“I’m gonna enjoy this.”
in fact, she’s the driving force in helping
Gracie return to her own.
Gracie and Cheryl’s continued relationship
is also a main plot point, reinforcing the importance
of female friendships, but this time giving them
primary importance over romantic relationships with men.
“I knew you'd be listening.”
“Yeah well, what are friends for, right?”
In the final moments, Gracie tracks down a young girl
she blew off in the beginning of the movie
because she was too self-involved, and makes sure to tell her
(and the audience) that she was wrong
about prioritizing her appearance and other people's opinions.
“People may care about people that care
about themselves, but I just don’t
really care about those people.”
The sequel also provides an alternative to the crass
misogynistic male characters that we met in the original.
One of the leading men is a sensitive and sincere agent
who respects the woman he is dating.
“That’s a sweater that I bought for Janet
for her birthday, and that’s the hat that goes with it.
I’m sorry, I’m just really in love.”
So overall, not only does Miss Congeniality 2
offer more positive representation, but it also sends the inspiring message
that movies can progress and learn from their mistakes.
It’s impossible to do justice to the conversation of
Miss Congeniality’s takeaways without remembering the time
in which this film was made.
The early 2000s were an era when the widespread mentality
of post-feminism suggested that all important feminist goals
had already been achieved, while also villainizing vocal feminists
and denying any need for an ongoing fight against sexism.
So for a studio movie produced in 2000,
it’s notable at least that the film depicts these realities and empathizes
with those being bullied or marginalized.
Through its sequel — and the improving representation
of women today,
with more than half of modern movies passing
the bechdel test —
we can see how aspects of Miss Congeniality
laid the groundwork for progress.
“To us you will always be Gracie Lou Freebush …
this year’s Miss Congeniality!”