Why Beauty Matters to the Postcolonial Nation's Masters: Reading Narratives of Female Beauty in Pramoedya's Buru Tetralogy

Saraswati, L. Ayu

doi:10.1353/ff.2011.0025

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Especially, westernized elites of former peripheral colonies still believe in postcolonial rulers, their work and culture to be the 'best' (Picton, 2013). For example, 'pale' skin is considered to be more attractive and appealing than 'dark' skin by westernized elite in developing countries (Saraswati, 2011;Robinson, 2011). Such a rhetoric of so-called ideology of beauty has created ugly sociocultural issues within the local context of many peripheral countries.…”

Section: Cultural and Political Hegemonymentioning

confidence: 99%

International beauty pageants and the construction of hegemonic images of female beauty

Kumara

Jayawardhana

2018

Sri Lanka J. Soc. Sci.

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Binaries like 'beauty/ugliness' or 'fair/dark' are ideological images driving the world market for beauty products. How are these images created? How far is the process of construction of these images influenced by socio-political and economic hegemonies? This paper addresses these research questions by deploying a qualitative dominant 'Mixed Research Methodology' and 'Inductive Research Approach'. The paper is based on secondary data on titleholders of a major beauty pageant held during the 50 year period from 1967 to 2017. The data was analyzed using the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) method. The research discovered that 68% of titleholders are from peripheral/semi-peripheral countries such as India and Venezuela. Further, the researchers found that the physical features of these non-European titleholders from the peripheral states closely resemble western Caucasian 'white' woman, conforming to ideal standards of western feminine beauty. On the other hand, ironically, 95% of branded beauty products are manufactured and distributed by multinational companies with headquarters in developed countries. Accordingly, the research concludes that the women chosen as the world's most beautiful females display core characteristics of 'stereotypical western feminine beauty standards' and thereby, resemble a 'fantasy model of feminine beauty' conceptualized by a regime of 'white men', projecting its economic and political influence on the world stage. The fact that most titleholders are chosen from peripheral/semi-peripheral countries may be driven by a capitalist commercial project in which economies in the world dominant core countries have created a lucrative market for their beauty products in peripheral countries. Thus, this paper argues that the ideology and practice of international beauty pageants are shaped by the twin processes of global capitalism and world cultural-political hegemony.

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Section: Cultural and Political Hegemonymentioning

confidence: 99%

International beauty pageants and the construction of hegemonic images of female beauty

Kumara

Jayawardhana

2018

Sri Lanka J. Soc. Sci.

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“…Much of feminist thinking about beauty, however, deals with the dilemma of conceptualizing it as a phenomenon that promotes empowerment or oppression, usually of women. Postcolonial feminist theory highlights how the construction of masculinity stems power through imposing practices and processes of regulating and signifying (able) bodies; confirming that beauty (and therefore ability) lies at the core of postcolonial mastership (Saraswati, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“LOOK at YOU!”: Disembodiment between ugly bodies and able minds

Damianidou

Georgiadou

2021

Gender Work & Organization

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Evidence points to embodiment being perceived as a lived human experience that bridges the natural and the cultural. Therefore, embodied social identities seem to be related with the way people perceive their body as beautiful/ugly, namely worthy/not worthy. Using data from interviews with employees with disability, this paper explores the process of shaping the body within the postcolonial masculine organizational culture. On these grounds, we argue that the above process involves taking decisions at three levels: first, one must decide what their body is; second, define what their body can be; and third, assume what their body will be. Further, the data revealed how those with “ugly bodies” construct their identities in relation to nondisabled colleagues. Our theoretical and managerial contribution includes a better understanding of how workplace and social life tend to be organized based on the ideal(able) body.

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“…Additionally, while the black female body is deployed as a vehicle for hegemonic cultural projects, it is just as much a site of resistance and the celebration of black femininity. Furthermore, beauty is important to nationalist projects and intrinsic to the daily mundane lived experiences of cultural diversity and racial difference (O'Connor, 2010;Saraswati, 2011;Roces, 2005). In short, beauty encapsulates the complex identity politics that intersect along the lines of race, gender, age, (dis)ability, religion, nationality, ethnicity, class, and sexuality.…”

Section: Mainstream Feminist Debates On Beautymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another subtheme of racialized constructions of beauty is the global political economy of beauty. As highlighted thus far, beauty operates within not just a gendered context but also a racialized one (Patton, 2006;Banks, 2000;Hall, 2013;Mire, 2001;Saraswati, 2011Saraswati, , 2013McCracken, 2014). Therefore, it is important to place the black beauty culture in its cultural, economic, political, and historical context because it is a complex process shaped within black communities as much as it is formed in reaction to dominant white standards of beauty.…”

Section: The Global Political Economy Of Beautymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As such, feminists also examine the processes of racialization and sexualization in the global political economy of beauty showing how beauty is a useful analytical category to question the ways in which skin colour, hair texture, facial features, class privilege, and racialized or ethnic identities are connected to gender norms of beauty and femininity. While the "universality of beauty" (Jones, 2011:889) continues to hold some influence, the local conceptions of beauty are never entirely subsumed by the homogenized global (Jones 2011(Jones , 2008Saraswati 2013Saraswati , 2011McCracken 2014). Thus, as discussed earlier, these works also highlight how the global political economy of beauty reproduces gendered power and difference as well as racial divisions, thereby revealing that an analysis of race in globalized beautification processes and ideals further brings into doubt the idea of an omnipotent globalization that spreads Anglo-American beauty standards.…”

Section: The Global Political Economy Of Beautymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Diasporic Experiences of Everyday Multiculturalism: Navigating Race and Space Through African Women's Beauty Practices

Chimhanda¹

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This thesis examines how everyday multiculturalism and the African diaspora mutually interact to shape racialization processes in multiple spaces, both public and private, through an exploration of African women's beauty practices. Five main social spaces relevant to African women's diasporic experiences of everyday multiculturalism are analysed throughout the thesis including the self, the home, the church, social media, and the workplace. Blending analytic categories of everyday multiculturalism with the African diaspora while incorporating concepts from critical race theory, the public-private dichotomy, the women-as-nation premise, and feminist insights on agency, this thesis makes three central arguments based on the empirical findings. Firstly, I argue the dynamic interplay between everyday multiculturalism and the African diaspora simultaneously reconstitutes social spaces by creating rich combinations of complex experiences that challenge and redefine the "public" and "private" in various spaces through new meanings of race, beauty, class, pan-African continentalism, long-distance nationalism, multiculturalism, sexuality, and gender. Secondly, I argue everyday multiculturalism and the African diaspora simultaneously structure racialization processes so that African women's racialized identities are layered, formed, and informed by a new African diaspora community within Canada, local nationalist and postcolonial racial formations, Canadian discourses of multiculturalism, and globalized meanings of Blackness. Furthermore, racialization processes are constantly shifting across social spaces so that women creatively juggle different racialized identities by creating hybrid iterations, of being African and Black, that are heterogenous, complex, and multilayered. Lastly, I argue everyday multiculturalism and the African diaspora interact in paradoxical fashion to produce a conception of agency reflective of simultaneous articulations including accommodation and resistance. The ways women use their beauty practices to navigate race and space thus reveal the context dependent manifestations of different expressions of agency in the public and private. This complex dynamic makes it difficult to neatly generalize African women as either completely agentive or completely oppressed in any given space.

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Why Beauty Matters to the Postcolonial Nation's Masters: Reading Narratives of Female Beauty in Pramoedya's Buru Tetralogy

Cited by 5 publications

References 51 publications

International beauty pageants and the construction of hegemonic images of female beauty

International beauty pageants and the construction of hegemonic images of female beauty

“LOOK at YOU!”: Disembodiment between ugly bodies and able minds

Diasporic Experiences of Everyday Multiculturalism: Navigating Race and Space Through African Women's Beauty Practices

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