the mexican actress Ilse Salas stars miss 89one of the tv series most anticipated of the year, who shares the details of this project with us. During the Roaring ’20s, a group of men (white, wealthy, and cisgender, of course) thought it would be a good business opportunity for a group of young womenvirgin and beautiful compete for a prize: Being crowned the most beautiful woman in America and earning the honor of being called Miss America. Clearly, this idea conceived 100 years ago was a resounding success and now, year following year, the world celebrates (so to speak) numerous beauty pageants. Today, despite the fact that these competitions continue to be held, we understand that beauty cannot be measured or observed with a single parameter or a single form. In our days, because of the various cultural changes we have gone through, society is more aware of how these contests objectify women, undervaluing the image of our own gender and giving way to the emergence of rigid stereotypes, with which we are drastically evaluated, and even almost arbitrarily.
© Gerardo Lopez
Ilse Salas talks regarding her character in Señorita 89.
Ilse Salas tells us regarding Miss 89 and its plot
Under this context, arrives on the STARZPLAY platform miss 89a dramatic thriller set in what may have been the dark side of the beauty pageants in mexico at the end of the the 80’s. According to the official synopsis, the story follows Conceptionthe matriarch of biggest beauty pageant in the country, who –hand in hand with a team of expert makeup artists, trainers and even surgeons– welcomes 32 beautiful women to the La Encantada estate. The purpose? Train them to make one of them the next Miss Mexico. However, for these beautiful young women, what appears to be a dream of a warm summer night, will become a nightmare when they are enslaved and subjected to a prostitution ring, where they will be forced to use all their skills to get out. alive from that complex hell. In an exclusive interview for Vogue, Mexican actress Ilse Salas tells us regarding his leading role in miss 89, his most recent work in the field of interpretation. ‘I am a very intuitive person. I always say yes to jobs that intrigue me and say something to me at the time. In particular, what motivated me to accept this project is that it was going to talk regarding dark side of beauty pageants. If the pretty and playful side had been presented, which surely also exists, I don’t think I would have been so interested. Precisely what attracted me to miss 89 They were all the questions that he puts on the table,’ shares the actress.
Personally, I am once morest these contests, but not the women who participate in them, but those who govern them, taking advantage of the situation that the contestants are going through.
‘I think it’s very easy to judge, but it’s important to understand why women decide to be there and, at the end of the day, the decision they make is highly respectable. This largely reflects miss 89: the maximum exposure of patriarchy and women subjected to beauty standards dictated by men powerful that subsidize these contests’.
Ilse Salas’s character in Miss 89
Concepción – whom Ilse plays in the series – was another reason why she agreed to be a member of this production. According to the interpreter, her character “she is an esthete woman exercising patriarchal power”, confirming that not only because you are a woman you are necessarily a feminist or acts in favor of the same gender. However, it might be said that the appeal of Ilse’s character lies in the fact that she does not fall into a Manichean discourse, since she is neither good nor bad. For her, Concepción is a woman who moves in a world of contradictions – like many of us – and who acts to survive in an environment subjected to the yoke of the patriarchy that rules the world in which she finds herself.
There are more and more entertainment products that explore and transmit a message regarding the different sociocultural constraints that have been imposed on usthus vanishing –little by little– the gender roles that reaffirm inequality between men and women. For this reason, the topics addressed in miss 89 They are one of the strongest elements in the series. Issues such as the objectification of women, the canons of beauty and abuse are carefully treated, in order to sensitize audiences around the problems that distort the lives of women. Although, as Ilse Salas rightly states, “currently we have made progress in the treatment given to these themes and we have managed to break certain stereotypes, both in cinema and on television, but we still have a long way to go.
Miss 89: the Mexican series that reflects on beauty
“It is very complex to eradicate something that we have impregnated.”
miss 89 was written and directed by Lucia Puenzo (also director and screenwriter of the successful series La Jauría) and co-starred Natasha Dupeyrón, Ximena Romo, Barbara Lopez, Leidi Gutierrez and Coty Camacho. ‘It was fun working in a production made up mostly of women. I think the men were a little intimidated that something amazing was happening, but everyone who participated is too smart, sensitive and, from my perspective, happy to find a new world in the feminine,’ he explains. In addition, he comments that there was a happy atmosphere on the set that was always open to dialogue, with “super fun (and respectful) discussions of how the world is seen and understood.” She remembers with laughter, for example, the debates she had with Nicolás Puenzo, one of the directors of the series, regarding the personality of the character she plays. ‘Suddenly he told me that -Concepción is bad-. And I, along with the others, contradicted him and explained that the fact that she acted in such a way did not make her a bad person; rather you had to understand her background story. But hey, the viewers will also have their judgment,’ she shares. However, not everything was happiness and fun for the actress. Engrave miss 89 It was also an experience of reflection and intense confrontation with the past ‘It was quite painful to recount history and remember that time I grew up in. It’s heartbreaking to be 40 years old and realize that I did think that a woman’s measurements were 90-60-90. At what point did I buy those stereotypes? I think that’s what grieves me the most, that I bought them. And it also makes me angry to see how many things are still normalized’.
© Gerardo Lopez
The actress Ilse Salas tells us regarding her participation in the series Señorita 89.
It is easy to point out, but without a doubt, what is difficult is –in the words of Ilse Salas– ‘open your eyes, face the situation and then see what and how to modify those behaviors’. Although it is true that in recent times we have passed into a period where rights and participation as social beings of women they are finally being respected, it does not mean that the entertainment industry does not continue to normalize –both with what we see on screen, as well as what is behind the scenes– discourses of inequality, abuse, subordination and submission towards women. In the case of Ilse, the actress confesses that she has had some luck working in the artistic world. ‘I mightn’t say I have any history of abuse, but I do deal with what women struggle with every day. I have to put up barriers to prevent seduction or sexualization, which is quite exhausting. She has also touched me that they tell me comments like her: she is very brave, she wants to give her opinion a lot… Always with a certain infantilization that is too shocking.’
miss 89 comes to reveal before our eyes everything that was (or even continues) behind the scenes of beauty pageants: a stage –covered with a smoke screen spun under patriarchal instruction–, in which the fantasy of a few was placed, which normalized injustices and behaviors that today we would judge almost without a doubt, but like everything, it is necessary to understand the history and the context that precedes it. Furthermore, he demonstrates how, according to Ilse Salas, “beauty is an indefinable and subjective concept” that does not have to be evaluated. The series goes beyond presenting some queens to whom we must pay homage. It reflects the heartbreaking reality of the participants Miss Mexico, not without first making us recognize all the nonsense that we have normalized and how much damage we have done to ourselves and to others, by promoting an illusion where what is real is nothing more than the unreal or the utopian, which shows the dark side of vanity.
