Miss Penitentiary

This photo series documents the Miss Penitentiary Beauty Pageant. An annual beauty pageant that takes place in women's correctional facilities around Brazil and the world. The aim is to promote self esteem and integration amongst the women.

Each year in Brazil, a number of women’s correctional facilities take part in a ‘Miss Penitentiary Beauty Pageant’ with the aim of promoting self esteem and integration among the inmates. In some cases, the winner receives a reduced prison sentence. In 2012 I travelled to Matto Grosso in Brazil to document one of these pageants and to make portraits of the participants involved. 

I spent two days photographing and interviewing the women and their (mostly female) correctional officers before and during the pageant. Most of the women were in their early 20s, serving long sentences for crimes like theft, drug trafficking and in some cases homicide. Some were serving sentences for crimes they had been forced into committing by male partners. Many of them had children at home. Some had newborn babies and were allowed to live with them in prison for the first year of their lives. Almost all of the women I spoke to said they felt the crime they committed had been their only option. A way to support their families when they had little support themselves. 

Before the pageant, contestants get their hair and nails done by volunteers. Their dresses were made and donated by local fashion boutiques. They are judged on beauty and poise just like any other beauty pageant. 

What struck me was the level of joy amongst the women and the support they showed one another. And that’s what I hope people take from these images. It helped reshape how I thought about photographing women, given the pageant was not intended for the male gaze, but instead was a confidence-building exercise among the women – a stark contrast to many real-world beauty pageants, where the competition is intense. 

This was the first documentary project I undertook at a relatively young age. It had no real purpose at the time other than to satisfy my own curiosity and to take me out of my photographic comfort zone, which until that point had been assisting fashion photographers in NYC. The negatives have been sitting in boxes for over 10 years and sadly I lost the transcripts of interviews that my fixer Arthur helped me obtain and translate. I would love the opportunity to continue this project, ten years on, to explore the ways in which the themes i explored have changed and that which has stayed the same. And because my photography skills have evolved and improved as well.

For women, the idea of a beauty pageant can reflect a system in which we allow ourselves to judge each other, to pit ourselves against each other, and never feel like we are good enough. But these women showed me something very different.