Black Beauty: Aesthetics, Stylization, Politics

Previous work discussing Black beauty has tended to concentrate on Black women's search for white beauty as a consequence of racialization; the idea that beauty is a form of social capital and that light skin and straight hair ensure one's upward mobility in the labor market and in society. Without denying either the continuation of such aesthetics or their enduring power, this book uncovers the cracks in this hegemonic Black beauty; cracks which become clear if viewed through the lens of the performativity of everyday practices of stylization and the continuing significance of discourses of Black anti racist aesthetics. Drawing on detailed ethnographic research amongst British women of Caribbean heritage, this volume pursues a broad discussion of beauty within the Black diaspora contexts of the Caribbean, the UK, the United States and Latin America through different historical periods to the present day. With a unique exploration of beauty, race and identity politics, the author reveals how Black women themselves speak about, negotiate, inhabit, work on and perform Black beauty. Rather than dwelling on the workings of racialized beauty standards, this book reveals how women work with and against existing beauty paradigms to bring new Black beauty ideals into view at the level of the everyday. As such, it will appeal not only to sociologists, but anyone working in the fields of race, ethnicity and post-colonial thought, feminism and the sociology of the body.