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The Miss Galaxy Pageant is an annual event held in Nukuʻalofaalofa, Tongatapu in the Kingdom of Tonga that selects the "best" Fakaleiti. The event is held over a three night period and attracts crowds of up to 5000 people per night. The pageant has been operating since the mid-1990s and has become a major attraction for Tongans and tourists. Attendance by academics include Professors Niko Besnier, Heather Young-Leslie and Michael Poltorak, and international celebrities such as Pamela Stephenson, Michael Wilson and Minnie Driver.

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  • Miss Galaxy Pageant
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  • The Miss Galaxy Pageant is an annual event held in Nukuʻalofaalofa, Tongatapu in the Kingdom of Tonga that selects the "best" Fakaleiti. The event is held over a three night period and attracts crowds of up to 5000 people per night. The pageant has been operating since the mid-1990s and has become a major attraction for Tongans and tourists. Attendance by academics include Professors Niko Besnier, Heather Young-Leslie and Michael Poltorak, and international celebrities such as Pamela Stephenson, Michael Wilson and Minnie Driver.
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  • The Miss Galaxy Pageant is an annual event held in Nukuʻalofaalofa, Tongatapu in the Kingdom of Tonga that selects the "best" Fakaleiti. The event is held over a three night period and attracts crowds of up to 5000 people per night. The pageant has been operating since the mid-1990s and has become a major attraction for Tongans and tourists. Attendance by academics include Professors Niko Besnier, Heather Young-Leslie and Michael Poltorak, and international celebrities such as Pamela Stephenson, Michael Wilson and Minnie Driver. The Miss Galaxy Pageant celebrates the creativity, diversity and talent of GLBT Fakaleiti communities in Tonga. Contestants are mostly from Tonga, but may come from the Pacific and the Tongan diaspora. Structured similarly to the Miss Heilala beauty pageant, the Miss Galaxy contest both emulates and parodies the heterosexual gender stereotypes which are showcased in the Miss Heilala and considered normative in Tongan society. As with other examples of gender-liminal celebrations, the pageant performances are often humorous, sometimes lewd and/or provocative. Thus, where the Miss Heilala serves to highlight and preserve traditional cultural ideals of femininity, and is associated strongly with a view of Tongan culture as unchanging and separate from other Pacific nations, the Miss Galaxy embraces modernity (perhaps even post-modernity) and trans-locality. The word "Fakaleiti" literally translates as "like a lady". Traditionally in Tongan cultural practice, as in Samoa and other parts of Polynesia, there was recognition of men who preferred to behave like women, especially in terms of work. Weaving, barkcloth making, and other forms of creativity were feminine-gendered forms of work, and that some men gravitated to feminine behaviours was accepted. The term fakaleiti is an introduction into the Tongan language (leiti being borrowed from the English 'lady'), to describe this aspect of male gender liminality. Historically, this was not a disparaged social category. Eventually, the term Fakaleiti came to include forms of male homosexuality and eroticism, including men who prefer sex with men, as well as other transgender persons. Today, while the term "Fakaleiti" is used by the general population to refer to a completely feminized man who lives and works as a woman, it is not preferred by the Tongan transgender community on the grounds that it suggests simulating femininity rather that being truly feminine. Transgender persons more commonly use the term "leiti" to refer to themselves.
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