Intersectional Feminist Perspectives on Beauty and Power

Beauty functions as a form of currency that can grant access, privilege, and possibility. How do European beauty standards collude with patriarchal power to justify social inequalities? This course explores the social construction of beauty and its socio-political impact on people of all genders. We will chart the intersections of beauty and power in order to consider the colonial construction of racial and sexual hierarchies, the $445 billion beauty industry, and daily practices that subvert, queer, or decolonize beauty. With the goal of expanding our sense of what beauty is and does, we will mine feminist theory and popular culture for surprising commentary on topics including objectification, aging, celebrity, self-fashioning, and the politics of counter-aesthetics.