Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Body Beautiful: Comparative Meanings of Beauty in Brazil, South Africa and Jamaica

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Beauty and the Norm

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Globalization and Embodiment ((PSGE))

Abstract

This chapter examines the meanings and gendered norms of beauty in three different post-colonial contexts. The main hypothesis put forward is that self-stylization and the consumption of beauty products and therapies are particularly significant to non-white elites as they position themselves within unequal society and relate to the world. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Brazil, South Africa, and Jamaica, the article emphasizes the importance of consumption around the body as strategies deployed by non-white elites—particularly women–in dealing with racism and social inequality in their societies. The material presented de-centres common scholarly notions about the dominance of the Euro-American ideal of beauty. Indeed, in countries such as Brazil and Jamaica, alternative discourses on race mixture and the eroticization of brown-ness represent alternative understandings of beauty.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 19.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 27.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Abdullah, Afi Samelia. 1998. “Mammy-ism: A Diagnosis of Psychological Misorientation for Women of African Descent.” Journal of Black Psychology 24 (2): 196–210.

    Google Scholar 

  • Adhikari, Mohammed. 2005. Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community. Athens: Ohio University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • African Development Fund. 2011. “The Middle of the Pyramid: Dynamics of the Middle Class in Africa, April, 20th.” https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Publications/The%20Middle%20of%20the%20Pyramid_The%20Middle%20of%20the%20Pyramid.pdf. Accessed 10 April 2017.

  • Banet-Weiser, Sarah. 1999. The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Banks, Ingrid. 2000. Hair Matters: Beauty, Power and Black Women’s Consciousness. New York and London: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnes, Natasha. 2006. Cultural Conundrums: Gender, Race, Nation and the Making of Caribbean Cultural Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Barnett, Michael. 2016. “The Politics of Hair: A Focus on Natural vs Relaxed Hair in African Caribbean Women.” Ideaz 14: 69–100.

    Google Scholar 

  • Basch, Linda, Nina Glick-Schiller, and Cristina Szanton-Blanc. 1994. Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nation-States. Anghorne, PA: Gordon and Breach.

    Google Scholar 

  • Batulukisi, Niangi. 2000. “Hair in African Art and Culture.” In Hair in African Art and Culture, edited by Roy Sieber, Frank Herreman, and Niangi Batulukisi, 25–39. New York: The Museum for African Art; Munich: Prestel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beckford, George. 1972. Persistent Poverty: Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third World. London: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benjamin, Walter. 2006. The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire. Edited by Michael Jennings. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blas, Javier. 2014. “The Fragile Middle Class: Rising Inequality in Africa weighs in on New Consumers.” Financial Times, 18 April.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bogatsu, Mpolokeng. 2009. “Luxion Kulcha: Fashioning Black Youth Culture in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Journal of English Studies in Africa 45 (2): 1–11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bond, Patrick. 2005. Elite Transition; From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa. South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bordo, Susan. 1993. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brodkin, Karen. 1999. How Jews Became White Folks and What that Says About Race in America. Piscataway: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buckridge, Steeve. 2009. The Language of Dress: Resistance and Accommodation in Jamaica, 1760–1890. Mona: University of the West Indies Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cahill, Ann J. 2003. “Feminist Pleasure and Feminist Beautification.” Hypatia 18: 42–64.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caldwell, Kia Lilly. 2007. Negras in Brazil: Re-envisioning Black Women, Citizenship, and the Politics of Identity. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caradas, Ashleigh A., Estelle V. Lambert, and Karen E. Charlton. 2001. “An Ethnic Comparison of Eating Attitudes and Associated Body Image Concerns in Adolescent South African School Girls.” Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics 14: 111–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Charles, Christopher. 2003. “Skin Bleaching, Self-Hate, and Black Identity in Jamaica.” Journal of Black Studies 33: 711–28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Charles, Christopher. 2009. “Skin Bleachers’ Representations of Skin Colour in Jamaica.” Journal of Black Studies 40: 153–70.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chibnall, Steve. 1985. “Whistle and Zoot: The Changing Meaning of a Suit of Clothes.” History Workshop Journal 20: 56–81.

    Google Scholar 

  • Colebrook, Clair. 2006. “Introduction: Special Issue on Beauty and Feminist Theory.” Feminist Theory 7: 132–42.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Craig, Maxine Leeds. 2006. “Race, Beauty, and the Tangled Knot of a Guilty Pleasure.” Feminist Theory 7 (2): 159–77.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Diane E. 2010. “The Socio-Political Reconfiguration of Middle Classes and Their Impact on Politics and Development in the Global South: Preliminary Ideas for Future Research.” Political Power and Social Theory 21: 241–69.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Kathy. 2013. Re-shaping the Female Body: The Dilemma of Cosmetic Surgery. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deane, Dee Shirley. 1978. Black South Africans, A Who’s Who: 57 Profiles of Natal’s Leading Blacks. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Donaldson, Chanel. 2012. “Hair Alteration Practices Among Black Women and the Assumption of Self-Hatred.” NYU, Steinhardt, Applied Psychology Program: OPUS. http://Steinhardt.nyu.edu/appsych/opus/issues/2012/fall/hairalteration. Accessed 3 May 2015.

  • Dos Santos, Jocélio Teles. 2000. “O Negro no Espelho: Imagens e Discursos nos Salãos de Beleza Éthnicos.” Estudos Afro-Asiaticos 38: 49–65.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edmonds, Alexander. 2007. “The Poor Have the Right to be Beautiful: Cosmetic Surgery in Neoliberal Brazil.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13: 363–81.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edmonds, Alexander. 2010. Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex, and Plastic Surgery in Brazil. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Erasmus, Zimitri. 1997. “Oe! My Hare Gaan Huistoe: Hair Styling as Black Cultural Practice.” Agenda 32: 11–16.

    Google Scholar 

  • Erasmus, Zimitri. 2007. “Race.” In New South African Keywords, edited by Nick Shepherd and Steven L. Robbins, 169–81. Ohio: Ohio University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fanon, Frantz. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Felski, Rita. 2006. “‘Because It Is Beautiful’: New Feminist Perspectives on Beauty”. Feminist Theory 7 (2): 273–82.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferreira, Francisco H.G., Julian Messina, Jamele Rigolini, Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva, Mana Ana Lugo, and Renos Vakis. 2013. Economic Mobility and the Rise of the Latin American Middle Classes. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Online: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/LACEXT/Resources/English_Report_midclass.pdf. Accessed 10 April 2017.

  • Figueiredo, Angela. 2002. Novas Elites de Cor: Estudo sobre os Profissionais Liberais Negros de Salvador. São Paulo: Annablume.

    Google Scholar 

  • Figueiredo, Angela. 2003. “A Classe Média Negra não vai ao Paraíso: Trajetórias, Perfis e Negritude entre os Empresários Negros.” PhD diss., Universidade do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frankenberg, Ruth. 1997. Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social Change and Cultural Criticism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. 2009. Staring: How We Look. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilman, Sander L. 1985. Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilman, Sander L. 1998. Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul: Race and Psychology in the Shaping of Aesthetic Surgery. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilman, Sander L. 2000. Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery. New York: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gimlin, Debra L. 2002. Body Work: Beauty and Self-Image in American Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 2008. “Yearning for Lightness: Transnational Circuits in the Marketing and Consumption of Skin Lighteners.” Gender and Society 22: 281–302.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldstein, Donna. 1999. “‘Interracial’ Sex and Racial Democracy in Brazil: Twin Concepts?” American Anthropologist. New Series 101: 563–78.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gomes, Nilma Lino. 2006. Sem perder a Raiz: Corpo e Cabelo como Simbolos da Identidade Negra. Belo Horizonte: Autentica.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gordon, Doreen. 2015. “Negotiating Inequality: The Contemporary Black Middle Classes in Salvador, Brazil.” In People, Money and Power in the Economic Crisis, edited by Keith Hart and John Sharp. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, Ronald E. 1994. “The Bleaching Syndrome: Implications of Light Skin for Hispanic American Assimilation.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioural Sciences 16: 307–14.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, Ronald E. 1995. “The Bleaching Syndrome: African-American Response to Cultural Domination vis-a-vis Skin Colour.” Journal of Black Studies 26: 72–184.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heinze, Andrew R. 1990. Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigrants, Mass Consumption, and the Search for American Identity. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hobson, Janell. 2005. Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • hooks, bell. 1993. Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self Recovery. London: Turnaround.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hope, Donna. 2010. Man Vibes: Masculinities in the Jamaican Dancehall. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hordge-Freeman, Elizabeth. 2015. The Color of Love: Racial Features, Stigma and Socialization in Black Brazilian Families. Austin: University of Texas Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Isin, Engin F. 2008. Re-casting the Social in Citizenship. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jarrín, Alvaro. 2017. The Biopolitics of Beauty: Cosmetic Citizenship and Affective Capital in Brazil. Oakland: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kant, Immanuel. 2004 [1960]. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime. Translated by John T. Goldthwait. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Originally published in 1960 by the Regents of the University of California.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klopper, Sandra. 2010. “‘Zulu Dandies:’ The History and Significance of Extravagant Hairstyling Among Young Men from Colonial Natal.” Jacana 1 (Fall): 28–39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuper, Leo. 1965. An African Bourgeoisie: Race, Class, and Politics in South Africa. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kymlicka, Will. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Machado-Borges, Thäis. 2008. “O Antes e Depois: Feminilidade, Classe e Raça na Revista Plástica e Beleza.” Luso Brazilian Review 45: 146–62.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marx, Anthony W. 1998. Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa, and Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mbeki, Moeletsi. 2009. Architects of Poverty: Why African Capitalism Needs Changing. Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • McRobbie, Angela. 2009. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. Los Angeles and London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mercer, Kobena. 1987. “Black Hair/Style Politics.” New Formations 3: 33–54.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mhlungu, Gugulethu. 2014. “Big Hair, Big Business.” City Press, 23 November. Available at: https://www.news24.com/Archives/City-Press/Big-hair-big-business-20150429 (28 November 2017).

  • Miller, Errol. 1969. “Body Image, Physical Beauty, and Colour Among Jamaican Adolescents.” Social and Economic Studies 15 (1): 72–89.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mire, Amina. 2001. “Skin Bleaching: Poison, Beauty, Power and Politics of the Colour Line.” Resources for Feminist Research 28: 13–38.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mohammed, Patricia. 2000. “But Most of All mi Love Me Browning: The Emergence in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Jamaica of the Mulatto Woman as the Desired.” Feminist Review 65: 22–48.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moreno Figueroa, Mónica G. 2013. “Displaced Looks: The Lived Experience of Beauty and Racism.” Feminist Theory 14 (2): 137–51.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ncube, Mthuli, and Charles Leyeka Lufumpa. 2014. The Emerging Middle Class in Africa. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Neri, Marcelo Côrtes. 2008. The New Middle Class. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getulio Vargas/ Centro de Politicas Sociais. Available at: http://www.cps.fgv.br/ibrecps/M3/M3_MidClassBrazil_FGV_eng.pdf (23 November 2017).

  • Nuttall, Sarah. 2007. “Introduction: Re-thinking Beauty”. In Beautiful/Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics, edited by Sarah Nuttall, 6–29. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nyamnjoh, Francis, and Divine Fuh. 2014. Africans Consuming Hair, Africans Consumed by Hair. Africa Insight 44: 52–68.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ofer, Inbal, and Tamar Groves. 2016. Performing Citizenship: Social Movements Across the Globe. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ojong, Vivian Bessem. 2005. “Entrepreneurship and Identity Among a Group of Ghanian Women in Durban, South Africa.” PhD diss., University of Zululand, Durban, South Africa.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reichmann, Rebecca. 1999. Race in Contemporary Brazil: From Indifference to Inequality. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reid, Graeme. 2013. How to Be a Real Gay: Gay Identities in Small Town South Africa. Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ribane, Nakedi. 2006. Beauty…A Black Perspective. Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robotham, Don. 2000. “Blackening the Jamaican Nation: The Travails of a Black Bourgeoisie in a Globalized World.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 7 (1): 1–37.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rodulfo, Kristina. 2017. “Miss Jamaica Wore an Afro at Miss Universe 2017, and We Are so Here for It.” PopSugar, 27 November. Available at: https://www.popsugar.com/beauty/Miss-Jamaica-Davina-Bennett-Afro-Miss-Universe-2017-44301922. Accessed 28 November 2017.

  • Sansone, Livio. 2003. Blackness Without Ethnicity: Constructing Race in Brazil. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz. 1993. The Spectacle of the Races: Scientists, Institutions, and the Race Question in Brazil 1870–1930. New York: Hill and Wong.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seekings, Jeremy, and Nicoli Nattrass. 2005. Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sheriff, Robin E. 2001. Dreaming Equality: Colour, Race and Racism in Urban Brazil. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sieber, Roy. 2000. “History.” In Hair in African Art and Culture, edited by Roy Sieber, Frank Herreman, and Niangi Batulukisi, 18–24. New York: The Museum of African Art.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sieber, Roy, and Frank Herreman. 2000. Hair in African Art and Culture. New York: The Museum of African Art.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silvera, Janet. 2012. Policewomen Fight to Wear Afro-centric Hairdos. Jamaica Gleaner, 28 February.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strasser, Susan, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt. 1998. Getting and Spending. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tafari-Ama, Imani M. 2006. Blood, Bullets and Bodies: Sexual Politics Below Jamaica’s Colour Line. Kingston: Multimedia Communications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tafari-Ama, Imani M. 2016. “Historical Sociology of Beauty Practices: Internalized Racism, Skin Bleaching and Hair Straightening.” Ideaz 14: 1–19.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tate, Shirley. 2007. “Black Beauty: Shade, Hair and Anti-Racist Aesthetics.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30: 300–19.

    Google Scholar 

  • Telles, Edward E. 2004. Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Colour in Brazil. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomas, Deborah A., and M. Kamari Clarke. 2013. “Globalization and Race: Structures of Inequality, New Sovereignties, and Citizenship in a Neoliberal Era.” Annual Review of Anthropology 42: 305–25.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, Cheryl. 2009. “Black Women, Beauty, and Hair as a Matter of Being.” Women’s Studies 38: 851–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing. 2007. Black Diamond on the Move: Spending Patterns, Communication, Media Usage, Black Diamond Segment. Online: http://www.uctunileverinstitute.co.za/research/black-diamond-on-the-move/. Accessed 12 April 2017.

  • Wagley, Charles. 1957. “Plantation America: A Culture Sphere.” In Caribbean Studies: A Symposium, edited by Vera Rubin, 3–13. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wasser, Nicolas. 2016. “Regulating Sexy Subjects: The Case of Brazilian Fashion Retail and its Affective Workforce.” In Intimate Economies: Bodies, Emotions, and Sexualities on the Global Market, edited by Susanne Hoffmann and Adi Moreno, 57–78. USA: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weekes, Debbie. 1997. Shades of Blackness: Young Black Female Constructions of Beauty. In Black British Feminism: A Reader, edited by Heidi Safa Mirza, 113–26. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolf, Naomi. 1991. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women. New York: Harper Collins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zelizer, Viviana A. 1997. The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Pay Checks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, Li. 2010. In Search of Paradise: Middle Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis. New York: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica

    Doreen Gordon

Authors
  1. Doreen Gordon
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

    Claudia Liebelt

  2. University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

    Sarah Böllinger

  3. University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

    Ulf Vierke

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Gordon, D. (2019). Body Beautiful: Comparative Meanings of Beauty in Brazil, South Africa and Jamaica. In: Liebelt, C., Böllinger, S., Vierke, U. (eds) Beauty and the Norm. Palgrave Studies in Globalization and Embodiment. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91174-8_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91174-8_10

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-91173-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-91174-8

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation