This New Spanish Thriller on Lionsgate Play is All About Beauty Pageants

If you follow Miss Universe, you probably watched Miss USA R’Bonney Gabriel win the crown just a few weeks ago. You may also have an idea that she won at a time when the pageant is undergoing ~major~ changes.

Just this year, Miss Universe allowed mothers and married women to compete, a first in the pageant's history! Also, after years of being owned by men, Miss Universe is now under the leadership of its first woman and transgender woman owner, Thai business tycoon Anne Jakapong Jakrajutatip.

These changes are wins for womenkind! In fact, you’ll understand how major these wins are for us by streaming Lionsgate Play’s new crime series. Enter Señorita 89, a nail-biting, binge-worthy series featuring beauty queen hopefuls in Mexico. Here's an overview of this new crime-drama show:

Señorita 89

In 1989, 32 beauty queen hopefuls from all over Mexico arrive at La Encantada, the pageant organizers’ beautiful yet remote ranch in the middle of the jungle.

The contestants, cut off from the rest of the world, undergo an intense three-month training program. The goal: to win the title of Miss Mexico. To gain an edge over the competition and increase their chances of winning, the women must find sponsors—powerful men in Mexican society. In return, they agree to rigorous diets, strict training sessions, and even clandestine surgeries. But when one of the girls is found dead, the police are called in to investigate.

According to the series’ award-winning writer, director, and showrunner Lucia Puenzo (XXY, Wakolda), “Everything that scandalizes us today was allowed in 1989. The reification of women's bodies, sexual harassment in the workplace, the abuse of power relations by men, and the idea of thinking of women as someone else's property, with all the implications that this has. Framed in the bestial back room of beauty pageants, Señorita 89 comes to talk about the women who began to shake that world…and to blow it up from within."

Another interesting part is the characters themselves. Watching the women in Señorita 89 gives us a glimpse into beauty contestants’ motives for joining such pageants and what they stand to gain from it. For example, there is Dolores, a drug-addicted contestant who is also the pageant’s front-runner. There is Angeles, the only indigenous-looking contestant who tries to hide that she has a child and is in fact lactating. There is also Isabel, an ambitious young woman who wants to find her place in a man’s world.

Watch the official trailer here:

Stream pageantry and crime series Señorita 89 plus more shows featuring powerful women only on Lionsgate Play, powered by PLDT Home. Subscribe now at pldthome.com/lionsgateplay to redeem your free Lionsgate Play access.

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