For wider audiences in the Global North, beauty pageants have mostly lost their appeal and are often made fun of. If taken seriously, they are reproached for being misogynistic, both objectifying women’s bodies and celebrating unrealistic beauty standards. In other parts of the world, however, beauty pageants are a popular, growing industry. This is the case for the Nigerian beauty pageant industry, a world to which Oluwakemi Balogun introduces the reader in ‘Beauty Diplomacy – Embodying an Emerging Nation’.

Balogun uses data collected from several months of field research in Nigeria between 2009 and 2018 which include interviews and participant observations of two major national beauty contests. She thereby provides an insightful analysis of how the Nigerian beauty pageant industry contributes to the building of what she calls an emerging nation by linking ideas about gender and femininity to national identity in a globalised world.

Culturally divided and conflicted on the inside, and perceived as an under‐developed and corrupted African country from the outside, Nigeria has been struggling with building a unique and positive national identity on the one hand, and being accepted as a respected member and trustworthy partner by the international community on the other hand. In line with this, Balogun argues that emerging nations like Nigeria seek to unify their nation within their borders and position themselves as global players to the outside world simultaneously. To achieve their goal, they use means of soft power meant to influence people’s preferences through appeal and attraction.

As Balogun argues, beauty diplomacy is an instrument of soft power. It is strategically used by various actors in order to navigate between state politics and mass culture. Anchored in an aesthetic industry in which mostly women are rewarded for their physical appearance and moral dispositions, it elevates women’s bodies to cultural ambassadors, drawing from their so‐called aesthetic capital and linking it to discourses of national identity and international mobility.

Balogun shows that, in Nigeria, a whole cohort of pageant professionals works on building up beauty contestants to embody the characteristics of the ideal Nigerian woman, that is an educated and charitable national patriot on the domestic, and a modern cosmopolitan on the international stage. Because beauty queens connect Nigerians through the promotion of cultural values and manage to gain international recognition for their country by simultaneously representing tradition and modernity, Balogun understands them as civic ambassadors or: beauty diplomats.

Nigeria’s beauty queens act as in and outside beauty diplomats for their nation linking culture, politics and both the domestic and global economy. In addition, Balogun also illustrates how the entanglements of Nigeria’s strive for a united national identity and its international aspirations unfold as a set of contradictions which manifest themselves through the beauty contestants’ bodies: Pageant professionals groom contestants to become the perfect Nigerian woman. However, standards for beauty and femininity set for them do not only reflect traditional Nigerian beauty standards, but also typically Western ones with a preference for rather tall, slim and light skinned candidates. Furthermore, while contestants are asked to emphasise their local origins by displaying knowledge about Nigerian cultures and history or traditional cooking skills, they are expected to do so in perfect English, rather than in their Nigerian mother tongue. Through examples like these, Balogun shows how Nigerian beauty contestants’ individual personality is pushed out of the spotlight to make place for a re‐invention as hybrids that incarnate the emerging Nigerian Nation, bridging the gap between the national and the international.

The book is engagingly written and will appeal to social researchers interested in studies of gender, women bodies and femininity as well as international relations and globalisation. It provokes a rethinking not just of globalisation and of how emerging nations use means of soft power to link the local to the global and position themselves within the international community. It also provides valuable insight into how women’s bodies are constructed, sculptured and shaped to serve as beauty ambassadors and projection screen for a nation’s domestic and international aspirations.

对于全球北部的广大观众来说，选美大赛已经失去了吸引力，而且经常被人们取笑。如果认真对待，它们会因女性厌恶症而受到指责，既使女性的身体变得客观又赞美了不切实际的美容标准。然而，在世界其他地方，选美大赛是一个受欢迎的，正在成长的行业。尼日利亚选美业就是这种情况，Oluwakemi Balogun向世界介绍了“美女外交–体现新兴国家”这一主题。

Balogun使用从2009年至2018年间在尼日利亚进行的为期几个月的实地研究收集的数据，其中包括对两次主要的全国选美比赛的访谈和参与者观察。因此，她通过将关于性别和女性化的观念与全球化世界中的民族认同相联系的方式，对尼日利亚选美业如何为她所谓的新兴国家的建设做出了有见地的分析。

尼日利亚内部在文化上存在分歧和冲突，从外部被视为一个欠发达和腐败的非洲国家，一方面，尼日利亚一直在努力建立独特和积极的民族认同，并被接受为受人尊敬的成员和可信赖的伙伴另一方面是国际社会。与此相应，Balogun认为，像尼日利亚这样的新兴国家寻求在其边界内统一其国家，并同时将自己定位为对外部世界的全球参与者。为了实现他们的目标，他们使用软实力手段通过吸引力和吸引力来影响人们的偏好。

正如巴洛根所言，美容外交是软实力的一种手段。各种参与者都从战略上使用它，以便在国家政治和大众文化之间导航。锚定在一个审美行业中，在该行业中，大多数女性因其外表和道德品德得到奖励，它利用所谓的审美资本并将其与民族身份和国际流动性话语联系起来，将女性的身体提升为文化大使。

Balogun指出，在尼日利亚，一群选美专业人士致力于培养选美选手，以体现理想的尼日利亚女性的特征，该女性是国内受过教育和慈善的民族爱国者，在国际舞台上是现代的国际主义者。由于选美皇后通过提升文化价值来联系尼日利亚人，并通过同时代表传统和现代性而设法获得尼日利亚的国际认可，因此巴洛贡将他们理解为公民大使或：美外交官。

尼日利亚的选美皇后充当着将自己的国家与文化，政治以及国内和全球经济联系起来的国家的内外外交官。此外，Balogun还说明了尼日利亚为争取统一的民族身份而进行的纠缠和其国际诉求如何通过一系列矛盾展现出来，这些矛盾通过选美选手的身体表现出来：选美专业人士为选手们锦上添花，成为完美的尼日利亚女人。但是，为她们设定的美容和女性气质标准不仅反映了尼日利亚传统的美容标准，而且通常反映出西方人对女性的身材，苗条和肤色的偏爱。此外，虽然要求参赛者通过展示有关尼日利亚文化和历史的知识或传统烹饪技巧来强调他们的本地血统，他们应该以完美的英语而不是尼日利亚的母语来做到这一点。通过这样的例子，Balogun展示了尼日利亚美女选手的个人个性如何被脱颖而出，从而为重新崛起的尼日利亚民族化身为混合动力，从而缩小国家与国际之间的鸿沟创造了条件。

这本书写得引人入胜，将吸引对社会性别，女性，女性化以及国际关系和全球化感兴趣的社会研究人员。它不仅引发了全球化的思考，也引发了对新兴国家如何利用软实力手段将当地人与全球联系起来并在国际社会中定位自己的反思。它还提供了关于如何构造，雕刻和塑造女性身体以作为一个国家的国内和国际愿望的美丽大使和投影屏的宝贵见解。