Article

Displaced looks: The lived

experience of beauty and
racism

Feminist Theory
14(2) 137151
! The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1464700113483241
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Monica G. Moreno Figueroa

Newcastle University, UK

Abstract
With a focus on appearance and racialised perceptions of skin colour, this paper discusses the differences between being and feeling acceptable, pretty or ugly and the
possibility of such displacement (from being to feeling or vice versa), as a way to
understand what beauty does in peoples lives. The paper explores the fragility of
beauty in relation to the visibility of the body in specific racialised contexts. It investigates the claim that beauty can be considered a feeling that emphasises processes (what
beauty does) rather than contents (what beauty is). Drawing from life stories with
Mexican women, I examine their concerns about visibility, temporality and appearance
as expressions of racist practices and ideas, within a context where the racial project of
mestizaje (racial mixture) is in operation. Beauty matters as it makes evident the pervasiveness of racism in the everyday. The lived experience of beauty, in its displacement
and fragility, as a feeling and as resource, can also point to some of the strategies to
resist, cope and get on.
Keywords
Beauty, feeling, mestizaje, Mexico, racism, racist logics

Where could we start exploring what beauty or ugliness does in peoples lives?
Although the rules of femininity or masculinity could be a good beginning, it is
my argument here that ideas about race and nation, and the experiences of racism
at work in any given context, also require careful attention. This article responds to
feminist claims that have urged us to explore beauty as an empirical and pragmatic
question. The question [of beauty] for feminist politics, wrote Claire Colebrook in
her 2006 introduction to a special issue of Feminist Theory on beauty, is not so

Corresponding author:
Monica G. Moreno Figueroa, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, 5th Floor, Claremont Bridge
Building, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK.
Email: monica.moreno-figueroa@ncl.ac.uk

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much moral is beauty good or bad for women? but pragmatic: how is beauty
dened, deployed, defended, subordinated, marketed or manipulated, and how do
these tactics intersect with gender and value? (p. 132). This article responds to this
call for tackling the pragmatics of beauty in the specic case of Mexico, asking not
only about gender and value but also about how notions of race, racism and nation
circulate and are set in motion.
Thinking of beauty as an empirical and pragmatic question challenges the
common moral imperatives that have accompanied most research on beauty:
mainly that beauty is either bad, superuous and must be resisted, or that it is
good, a choice and a path to normality. Some feminist authors have started to
account for how beauty, in any case, matters, is present, and is an everyday concern
(Brand, 2000; Felski, 2006). So rather than wanting to establish what beauty is, my
focus here is on what beauty does: how beauty is an ambivalent concept, a gendered, racialized, and contested symbolic resource (Craig, 2006: 160). A sizeable
literature drawing mainly from feminist studies has examined beauty standards and
practices. It has explored how beauty impacts womens lives and structures gender
relations in Anglo-European contexts, focusing on how it plays a role in the currency and exercise of power. Debate has tended to adopt one of two main competing feminist analyses: beauty as a component of a structure of oppression
and . . . beauty as an instrument of female agency (Craig, 2006: 164).
Foundational academic work on beauty such as Iris Marion Youngs (1980) and
Sandra Lee Bartkys (1997) discussed beauty work as a disciplinary practice supervised by an all-encompassing male gaze. Importantly, however, their subject was an
unmarked woman, with no racialised identity, no class base, implicitly heterosexual, young and located in industrialised societies. From the 1980s, a body of work
critiqued this, demonstrating how beauty standards maintained racial inequality as
well as gender inequality (Craig, 2006: 163). Still unaccounted for, however, were
subjective experiences of beauty in relation to womens desires to feel normal, as a
source of pleasurable practice, or as sites for identity work. In response,
research on issues such as plastic surgery (Davis, 1995), body work (Gimlin,
2002), and beautication processes as a creative/group activity (Cahill, 2003) presents a more nuanced account. Yet, as Craig rightly states, such research still
neglects the social locations of its subjects, and while acknowledging these were
white, middle class and heterosexual, such work does not address how such locations matter (Craig, 2006: 165).
In this article I therefore want to continue the work of more recent feminist
researchers which has not simply listed gender, race and class, but rather has
attempted to esh out their research participants experience as a way of responding and tuning in to what specic data are calling for (Candelario, 2007; Casanova,
2011; Craig, 2006; Felski, 2006; Hobson, 2005; Tate, 2009). Moreover, I want to
locate this analysis within a framework that allows me to work through the particular context of Mexico. Such a framework refers to what I have been calling
mestizaje logics (or more broadly, racist logics) as complex strategies of racial
dierentiation that permeate social life (Moreno Figueroa, 2010, 2011).

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Mestizaje refers here to the ocial state discourse on racial and cultural mixture as
the dening feature of the nation and of Mexicanness. It is also an everyday social
conguration with roots in a broader historical process emanating from the conquest and colonial experience (Gruzinski, 2002). The racist logics that sustain such
a conguration have made it possible for racism to be lived as a constant, normalised feature of social life. Racism, as a structuring principle that creates racist
logics, is not recognised institutionally or publicly, but rather is lived as an individual embodied experience. Rarely related to the now questionable understandings of race and wider structural dynamics, racism is more often perceived as
personal fault, and as just how things are. A key feature then of the workings
of racism in Mexico is the breakage of the relationship between racist practices and
ideas about race. The experience of racism has lost its explicit links with the
processes of its formation. This lack of public discourse about race and racism
is a result of the historical move towards nation-building, modernisation
processes and responses to strong racial projects emanating from Europe and the
United States. In such a context, racism has gone unrecognised. Racist practices
have been discursively separated from the particular understandings of race from
which they have emanated, acquiring dynamics of their own: that is, mestizaje
logics.
This scenario is complicated by a prevalent racial discourse of mestizaje rooted
in notions of national identity, belonging and citizenship. One of the features of an
everyday experience framed by the racial logics of mestizaje is that, due to its
uidity, there are no xed racial positions and people are not engaged in processes
of identity politics as found in other parts of the world. This is what is striking
about mestizaje: people are not white or black, but rather, they are whiter than or
darker than others. The category of mestizo (a mixed race individual), which epitomises the subject of national identity, the Mexican, is relative. As historian Alan
Knight (1990) points out, mestizo represents an achieved and ascribed status underpinned by whitening practices and promises of whiteness as privilege. It is within
this framework that the racialisation of understandings of beauty is brought to the
fore. I now want to establish some key background details of the research from
which this analysis draws.
This article is based on a wider research project interested in studying the mestizo population in Mexico. Specically, the project explores how this group, which
sets itself as the privileged point of reference to Indigenous peoples, AfroMexicans, and other migrant groups, lives and reproduces racism. So, dierently
to most research on racism in Latin America, my work concentrates on a section of
the population, the majority, which does not consider itself as racial or ethnic, but
rather as national. Mestizas/os or Mexicans have remained racially unnamed and
unmarked, and when they are, it is in very precarious ways, precisely due to the
logics of mestizaje that frame everyday life. The overall aim of this project has been
to give an account of the qualities of the experience of racism (how it feels and what
it does) in order to make racism public as a social and political problem that crosses
all social groups and relations rather than something that just happens to some.

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A key question is, then, how is racism in Mexico an everyday practice that goes
from the most intimate to the most institutional spaces and exempts nobody?
Through focus group discussions and life story interviews based on family
photographs, I explored the complexities of the visible, racialised and gendered
body in relation to notions of mestizaje, racism and national identity. The main
sample included 40 Mexican women who t a broad criterion: born in Mexico,
living in urban environments, with a mestiza/Mexican family history (self-identied as such) and a personal photographic collection. The participants were
between the ages of 18 and 55, and living in three cities Huajuapan de Leon,
Leon and Mexico City. In terms of their occupations and class experience, they
were engaged as academics, civil servants, designers, housewives, journalists,
lawyers, photographers, political activists and rural teachers. These womens
accounts pointed towards the ambivalences and diculties of racial identication in relation to the visibility of their bodies. Personal photographs were
employed to access the ambivalence of making use of the visible to understand
the aective and visceral experience of racism, while acknowledging the need to
denounce that same visibility as core to the production of racism itself. The aim
was to explore racism from the particular perspective of the visible that is,
the ways the participants see and are seen; the elements that interact to inform
their gaze; the meanings and values of their own image (Moreno Figueroa,
2008).
Not surprisingly, a concern with beauty emerged as a strong theme within my
data, working primarily to express the sense that beauty is dicult that is,
beauty is fragile, unsettled, ambivalent. In order to advance an analysis of
beauty as an empirical and pragmatic question, as well as a contextualised
resource that is experienced as dicult, this discussion is structured according
to three key issues: (a) the dierences between being and feeling acceptable, beautiful, pretty or ugly and the possibility of such displacement (from being to
feeling) as a way to approach an understanding of what beauty does in peoples
lives; (b) the fragility of beauty in terms of its empirical experience in a racialised
context where mestizaje logics are in operation; and (c) the possibilities of extending the claim that beauty can be considered a feeling, a bodily inclination, which
emphasises the processes of beauty (what beauty does) rather than the contents of
beauty (what beauty is).

From prettiness to ugliness

At the time of the interview, Consuelo was proud that she had a stronger sense of
herself than she did when she was younger. She had recently lived abroad for a year
and had experienced a big change in how she perceived her appearance. On her
return to Mexico she felt more able and relaxed to face her family, friends and
acquaintances after growing up in an intimidating environment. She shared with
me that she was upset about not having a partner and that she decided to go to
psychotherapy to work out her feelings about this. However, in the account of her

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interaction with the therapist she was confronted with the strength of racialised
beauty parameters:
Look, when I came back from Europe I wanted to work through the partner
stu . . . everyone was telling me how guapa [attractive], how bonita [pretty]
I looked, so then that point sorted out, but why dont I have a partner? So I went
to a gestalt psychotherapist and it was horrible . . . I told him the whole story of how
I used to feel super fea [really ugly] and that I was worried about not having a partner.
To make the long story short, he started giving me advice! . . . I came back with short
hair, with a European style, I felt really good, everybody was telling me that my
haircut was muy bonito [really nice] . . . I arrived without earrings; I also was wearing
very little makeup. So he thought I was not very feminine and me: I am pretty, I just
want to know why I dont have a partner, and he was no, you are not pretty and he
said, look, why dont you let your hair grow and wear earrings? It was horrible
because on top of that he said: dont worry, I have a patient who is rubia [blonde]
and she doesnt have a boyfriend either. And I had just returned from Europe, and
had got rid of those stereotypes. When I was there I used to say: Those Mexican men
are too much, they think blondes are the best, they should come here so that they will
realise its not true . . . And he tells me: Look I have a patient who is blonde and she
feels completely alone, she is muy guapa [very attractive] and has blue eyes. I mean, he
described her to me and said she had self-esteem problems! . . . I went out crying and
felt really bad: of course, you dont wear earrings, you have short hair, you dont
wear a skirt, how do you expect that men will look at you? . . . In the end it was like:
it is clear that soy una fea [Im an ugly woman] and Im morena [brown/dark] and
everything, I have to make myself up . . . I havent got over the being-ugly situation,
because he said there are blondes with self-esteem problems, so Ive got even more
reason . . . (Consuelo, 29, Leon)

So, where to start? We could make a literal analysis of the specic talk Consuelo is
using. Her utterances are signicant particularly in her use of terms such as feeling
and being: what are the implications of feeling ugly or being ugly? How are these
two dierent states related? How distant are they from each other? How similar?
To what context and wider discourses is being something or feeling something
(as visceral, visible and embodied as beauty or ugliness) attached? We could
extend these questions to explore Consuelos understanding of her own process
of displacement from ugliness to beauty. She is rst talking about feeling ugly and
then moves on to being pretty to end up being ugly again. Here, the fragility of
such displacement, and the conditions in which it is occurring, emerge strikingly.
Not only are these shifts narrated within one specic moment, one experience
(packaged for the interview), but also they correspond to a particular context
framed by wider racialised and gendered discourses about adequate, appropriate
or expected physical appearances.
We could also analyse the gendered frames of everyday existence where the rules
of femininity are clearly exposed (the skirt, the hairs length, the earrings). As well

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as the psychotherapists questionable procedure, we can see through Consuelos

account of his narrative how the rules of a particular type of femininity (stereotypical, mainstream, white and predictable) get rearmed. Moreover, this extract is
an example of how national identity stereotypes are reproduced, as well as how
intersections of value, gender and racialised understandings of beauty are in operation in geographic terms. While heterosexual rules are presumed (for the therapist,
all men like his version of women and Consuelo wants to be pretty for men),
national identications are also reinforced. In this extract, Consuelo is giving us
a version of what she believes are the standards of beauty in Europe, where she felt
accepted because of her particular physical characteristics. In her experience, she is
seen approvingly and she is desired. She then presents a version of the standards of
beauty in Mexico, where she feels unappreciated because of those same physical
characteristics. From her perspective, in Mexico men think that blondes are best,
and emphasise hair and skin colour as key dening terms of beauty.
Earlier in the interview, Consuelo recalled with sadness those moments when she
felt ugly (see also Moreno Figueroa, 2012). Looking at one of her photographs, she
shared what her uncles used to say to her while she was growing up: They used to
call me prieta [dark], cabezona [big head], and dientuda [goofy], and I used to say:
Why do I have such big teeth? Why am I so morena? (Consuelo, 29, Leon). We
nd here more indications not only of racialised parameters of beauty, but also of
her apparently na ve questions (can anybody really ask why our bodies have
specic physical features?); she makes evident how traits can happen to the body.
For example, specic sizes, colours, heights and features sometimes work in favour
of beauty and against ugliness and sometimes vice versa. Her questions about this
happening to also suggest that such traits could have been manipulated, planned or
worked out previously; they could have been negotiated. The possibility of negotiation appears throughout my research as central to the development of Mexican
peoples sense of belonging and can be observed in how racial mixing has been seen
as a form of improving (or not) the racialised body. This makes evident how the
experience of the racialised body is not settled and is therefore fragile. This sense of
a negotiation relates both to the performance of femininity and to the specicity of
contemporary Mexican racial discourses; in other words, how mestizaje logics
operate in the everyday experience of beauty.
If we think of ugly as a term related to that which causes horror or fright, to that
which is oensive or repulsive, or at least displeasing in appearance, it is a strong
word. However, if the racialised experience of the body is not settled, the terms
prettiness or ugliness are not settled either. Rather than being able to delimit what
these terms are, what their content is, it seems ugliness and prettiness are more
useful if comparable to a feeling. In a similar way to feeling angry, sad, anxious or
relaxed, Consuelo used to feel ugly and she does not feel like that anymore, unless
or until somebody confronts her belief. This exposes the fragility of the self-perception of feeling or being ugly, and raises questions about whether ugliness (or prettiness) is something you can get over, as Consuelo thinks she did. However, this
self-perception can fall apart at any time. Perceived in this way as feelings

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prettiness and ugliness appear not to be qualities of the body that are either
achieved by the individual or ascribed by the social. Instead, when in motion,
prettiness and ugliness are produced by the relationality of the individual and the
social in particular gendered and racialised moments of interaction. This is how it is
possible to think of beauty as a feeling, moreover, as an aesthetic feeling: it is a
feeling in its unsettledness; it is aesthetic in relation to the racialisation it allows; it
is temporal and relational. However, what is not unsettled is that physical appearance is always an issue; beauty is an unavoidable lure constantly present in peoples
lives (Coleman and Moreno Figueroa, 2010; Felski, 2006).

Being/feeling acceptable: Whiteness, class and privilege

I am also interested in exploring the idea of being/feeling acceptable. Paulina,
another participant, illustrates this well.
In my life beauty has been a very important issue, because I always say, jokingly, that
Im the daughter and the mother of las bonitas [pretty women]. My mother had una
belleza [the kind of beauty] that could stop a train, and its not that my sister and I are
feas [ugly], we are just pasaderitas [acceptable passing with ease] . . . My mother was
of una belleza impresionante, guapsima [a striking beauty, so attractive] but for example when I was a kid, the neighbours would say things like: Oh these girls, with such
an attractive mother, so my sister and I grew up with that, but when my daughter was
born, you know what people would say to me? . . . Oh, shes so hermosa [beautiful]!
Then they would turn, look at me, and say: she must be exactly like her father! And I
used to wonder: Why dont they say: what a beautiful girl and thats all? Do you
know what I mean? It was terrible. I grew up with those issues. I dont think Im ugly,
but I always carry with me the ambivalence of what feminine beauty is and that
undoubtedly is something . . . (Paulina, 49, Mexico City)

In this extract, the notion of acceptability comes into play in the discussion about
the parameters of beauty. This category opens the possibility of locating prettiness
and ugliness on a continuum where being acceptable can be placed somewhere,
perhaps in the safe (yet still uncomfortable) middle. These notions of prettiness,
ugliness and acceptability are all bound to each other and can only be understood
in relation and comparison to one another.
Being acceptable could easily be understood in terms of being typical, ordinary,
plain, unremarkable, average or normal. Paulinas sense of acceptability comes
from comparing herself to her mother and her daughter and locating them as
the points of reference from which to dene who is and who is not beautiful.
However, it is worth noting that Paulina denes herself as a white mestiza, very
proud of having been born in Mexico but also coming from a migrant family with
Jewish, Chilean and Spanish heritage. Many times during the interview she complained about how many people would not identify her as Mexican, challenging her
belonging to the nation. It is interesting then that she considers herself as

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acceptable, as average. She is one of the few of my interviewees who can aord to
call herself someone who can pass with ease, a sense of condence that might come
from her middle-class background and her unmarked body. So in an unexpected
way, considering herself as acceptable and as able to pass with ease suggests a sense
of reassurance and self-condence that was not present in other women who were
more clearly located at the darker side of the mestizaje spectrum. This resonates
clearly with studies on whiteness, privilege and normality (Nayak, 2007), work on
class that argues that the middle class is the invisible norm (Skeggs, 2004) and
discussions on race and passing (Ginsberg, 1996).
I also want to highlight the bluntness with which issues of appearance are
verbalised in Mexico and how language reinforces stereotypes of beauty. It is
noticeable throughout my interview data that los demas, these others (neighbours/people), appear to have the power and freedom to express their opinions.
Similarly to Michel Foucaults (1977) panopticon and notions of (self) surveillance,
the others simultaneously represent anybody and everybody and, in their anonymity, they seem to express societys verdict on what is and what is not beautiful,
acceptable and adequate (Casanova, 2004). These others play a signicant role in
shaping the participants perceptions of beauty. Accompanying Paulina throughout her life, these voices have been not only a terrible thing to grow up with, but
also a key component in her feelings of ambivalence towards the meaning of feminine beauty. The practice of commenting aloud on the appearance of others is not
exclusive to those privileged individuals who speak from the authority of being
physically acceptable. On the contrary, this practice is something everybody feels
entitled to do in Mexico and elsewhere and thus one that constantly erases the
boundaries between fault-nders and fault-carriers. This erasure of boundaries
reinforces the idea that discrimination is a practice that circulates among people.
A racist act is not done to one person by one person; it is not a matter of action and
reaction or of perpetrators and victims. Practices of racism could rather be considered as dynamic relations within which are embedded historically produced
racial discourses, that is, mestizaje logics. Acknowledging the shifting, pervasive
and ambivalent character of the practices of racism means engaging with the
contradictory implications of their everydayness and the diculty of locating
them with precision.

Photographs of beautiful morenas

This array of beauty terms and the experience of them alongside that of racism
have a strong correlation with the realm of the visible (Moreno Figueroa, 2008).
My research used photographs as a methodological tool to explore not only peoples memories but, moreover, participants take on their own image the one(s)
seen by themselves and the one(s) seen by others. The visibility and the interaction
of gazes, within an understanding that seeing is a racialised, gendered and classed
cultural practice, also brings us close to the tension between being and feeling
beautiful, acceptable, pretty or ugly. Patricias case below is similar to Paulinas

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story in its concern with beauty, but also links with the issue Consuelos narrative
raised about dark skin. It provides an example of the diculty of correlating personal experience with the evidence of photographic images and external stories
which, in this case, Patricia hears from others about herself.
These photographs . . . why did I select them? Because they made comments about
them. I feel they were counterproductive . . . For example in this one Im newly
born, I remember that my mother told me they named me Patricia, like her, because
I looked like her. My father rst saw me at the hospital and told her: Oh! She is a
morena muy linda [very pretty dark-skinned girl], just like you. My father regarded my
mother very highly and I was like her, so thats why Im called Patricia. So, in this
photograph, I was so bonita [pretty] [in ironic tone], Im saying this the way my
grandmother used to, because this is my problem [laughs] . . . My problem is that
I never felt pretty. I mean, I always felt dierent, less, inferior, never pretty at all.
So then I see the photograph and I say: Hey! That girl is pretty. Dont I? I didnt feel
pretty, but they were always making so much fuss about it . . . They tell me these
stories but I dont quite believe them . . . So then I wonder, why is it so dicult for
me to accept myself or acknowledge it even a little bit . . . ? (Patricia, 37, Huajuapan)

In this extract, there is a continuous interaction between internal and external

gazes, which tell dierent stories of the same self and question the idea of a unied
individual. Internal and external gazes could work as resources to enrich selfunderstanding, but since a simplifying perception of the individual will tend to
eliminate fragmentation, layers and, ultimately, complexity, the gazes seem to confuse rather than enhance Patricias self-appreciation. Patricia expresses her diculty of bringing together three possible versions of herself: the one she knows by
what others tell her about herself (knowledge); a second one that relates to how she
feels about herself (feeling); and a third one that tells her about the image she sees
(visibility), which, although supported by what others have said of her, is in contradiction to what she sees. These versions (knowledge feeling visibility) act as
dierent ways of looking at herself, as dierent gazes that constitute larger units
and unique experiences. In such a presentation, the gazes fragment her individual
perception. While Patricia is telling us her story from her present perspective, we
can also see that she is able to distinguish her life experience as constituted by
plural selves, with perceiving gazes, which coexist simultaneously without linear
time considerations.
This extract also prompts us to consider the relational perception of beauty.
Patricia, like Consuelo and Paulina, seems confused about who has the authoritative voice that is able to give the denitive verdict of who is and who is not beautiful. At stake is not only who conveys the truth, but what the truth could be; for
example, in the reaction of her father, what for him is considered beautiful, for her
is not. Although this dierence in opinion emphasises how denitions of beauty
vary and depend on who is dening and at what point in time, for Patricia, the
salient issue is her inability to believe what others continually tell her. In addition,

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as she stated later on in the interview, it is dicult to believe those others when
their attitudes and actions tell dierent stories. Moreover, it seems even suspicious
if attitudes and actions are consistent. For example, Patricia recalls another voice,
that of a photographer, who asked permission to display a photograph of her as a
child to advertise his studio because he liked it so much. She also talked about
being asked for her portrait to be used to represent her school as a good image of
Mexico. She is left wondering: this situation was a bit confusing because I didnt
understand . . . .
These various events are received with a complete sense of disbelief (why is it
so dicult for me to accept myself?) and confusion (I didnt understand),
leaving the truth indenite: is it possible to be pretty? Why cant Patricia understand? As in Consuelos case, Patricia is also asking herself why? Consuelo
framed her question in the past, as something she used to wonder in a period of
her life that she feels she has now overcome (however fragile that overcoming
is). For Patricia, it is a question that haunts her. However, the mere possibility
of being able to ask why? reveals the interactions that have generated her
problem: not feeling beautiful despite the fact that everybody says she is. So
this inability to feel beautiful does not question the premise of appearance
(beauty is a lure) and is also perceived as a personal issue, as if a selfesteem-raising exercise would suce. The structural relations of power in
which racialised perceptions of the body emerge remain untouched. It is my
argument, then, that Patricias experience raises political questions about the
racist logics that are circulating and structuring everyday-life interactions. The
family, the hospital, the school, the photographers studio window leave unchallenged the relevance of appearance while reproducing its racialised rationale.
Patricias extract is also informed by discourses that, in this case, make skin
into a fetish something that is external to her self, or multiple selves and
which acquires a life and a quality of its own. Her skin (and name) marks her,
and the story she has been told of her birth might be the key to this marking
procedure. The rst words she remembers being used to describe her relate to
her physical appearance: linda and morena (pretty and dark-skinned). These
words seem to trouble her, since in her life experience they have not been
truthfully or even coherently related; rather, they collide and constantly seem
to be in contradiction. She then remembers her grandmothers tone of voice
when she repeated that Patricia was so pretty. I recall that moment in the
interview: Patricia imitated the ironic voice of her grandmother and summarised
with that act many repeated moments in her life where she was confronted with
the ambivalence of words, images and perceptions.

Since I became pretty: Keeping oneself in the realm of

beauty
So beauty is dicult. It is a resource and a feeling, an unavoidable lure that
does dierent kinds of work: it stabilises and enables hierarchies to fall into

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147

place but also reminds us of the intermittent temporalities where beauty

resides.
Since I became bonita [pretty] I always carry my makeup with me, every day. Its like
I have to carry something to be how Im not. Im not really pretty, so I have to make
myself up, make an eort. Before I was completely the opposite: I was ugly and
I didnt take care of myself. But now its like Im the ugly girl who makes herself
up. I have to keep on making myself up until I get to a point where I dont care if I do
or not, and just think of myself as pretty because I am, and not as the ugly girl who
looks better because she makes herself up and makes an eort . . . (Consuelo, 29, Leon)

Since I became pretty says Consuelo. Is it then possible to achieve beauty?

Consuelo expresses various moments or modes of presentation of beauty. Each
of them operates, just like the body, as a powerful symbolic form (Bordo, 1997: 90),
as a metaphor of the processes people engage with when building and strengthening
their identities. Consuelo talks about being pretty, making herself pretty, and thinking of herself as pretty. All three moments are bound to a point in time; words such
as since, before, now, until, gesture to the temporal and dynamic processes
where beautication as a practice, and beauty as a state of being, overlap. They
also allude to dierent self-perceptions, which in this extract talk to each other in a
rather confrontational way.
First, Consuelo arms she is pretty, but she admits to always carrying her
cosmetics to be how Im not. So, is she or is she not pretty? Consuelo answers
herself: Im not pretty; she makes herself pretty. As if closing a circle, she then
starts again: Before . . . I was ugly and I didnt take care of myself. Like Patricia,
Consuelo is dealing with one self talking about the other self in charge of the
action, of the doing, of taking or not taking care, of carrying the makeup. So we
can ask again, has she achieved beauty? Not yet, but she will make herself up till
she thinks of herself as beautiful, until she believes she is beautiful. That is her goal
and a safe place where beauty, as a precious resource, would not slip away: she will
know she is beautiful. Bartky (1997) suggests that womens concern with making-up
their faces presents their bodies as decient and engages them in a struggle for
perfection. The disciplinary project of femininity is a set-up:
[I]t requires such radical and extensive measures of bodily transformation that virtually every woman who gives herself to it is destined in some degree to fail. Thus, a
measure of shame is added to a womans sense that the body she inhabits is decient.
(Bartky, 1997: 139)

If we explore this line of thought with a racialised lens that gives women dierent
starting points, what Consuelo seems to be saying is that sometimes the struggle for
beauty is not only a set-up. Racialised processes and histories play a role and
complicate a (limited) gendered narrative that fails to take racial logics into
account and that situates women as unable to stop giving themselves to radical

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processes of bodily transformation. Consuelo is talking about the extent to which

women have agency in negotiating the lure of beauty and she is also making evident
that, in everyday life, people cannot just walk away from racist and gendered
constraints. Rather than pointing towards wearing makeup as a way to succeed
in controlling her body, what Consuelo oers is an insight into the process of
dealing with, being practical about, making an eort and getting on with a specic
body, and the constant struggle with deciency and shame. The reasons that one
might give for the need to make an eort could be easily dismissed as evidence that
one is simply falling prey to a pervasive beauty industry. However, when this
analysis is also located within racial histories, the need for exploring the complexity
of beauty and its lure becomes apparent and a re-reading of womens agency is
enabled.
Consuelo then continues with a further key element in the self-perception of
beauty: the possibility of seeing oneself as beautiful. As with Patricias case, this
process is mediated by the opinions and comments of others, and more specically
through their gaze:
I started seeing myself as bonita [pretty] because of other peoples comments. Its what
Im working on at the moment in my therapy. Before I didnt see myself as pretty, I
didnt believe I was pretty or anything. I was ugly and thats it. The next stage, and
thats where Im at now, is that I feel pretty because of what others see. Im at that
stage: I need people to keep telling me . . . I only feel pretty because Im listening to
them and that gives me strength to keep taking care of myself and to conrm it. So
then the following stage would be that I truly believe it, that I say it to myself . . . When
Im depressed I go to the other extreme: Im ugly again. (Consuelo, 29, Leon)

Consuelo shares with us her worst fear: being ugly again. It is as if beauty is
something that can be given but that can also be easily taken away. This is
because beauty seems to be working more as a feeling she needs to truly believe,
rather than as a material or xed characteristic of the body, as in being pretty. If
she were pretty, she should not be concerned about being ugly again. She has
even delineated the stages involved in the process she has to go through in order
to achieve, or to be in total possession of, her beauty. At the moment, she
recognises that she depends on other peoples opinions and comments; she
needs their reassurance and their approving gaze. The nal step is to truly
believe that she is beautiful. But she also acknowledges that the ownership of
her beauty is very fragile, and I suggest that this fragility relates to the overlapping of the various denitions of beauty: is it something you see in yourself, is
it something you are, is it something you think about yourself, is it material, is it
in your imagination, is it in your gaze, is it in the gaze of others? How can we
locate beauty in its dynamic displacement? I suggest that what exists is a realm of
beauty where all these positions, gazes and debates take place simultaneously.
These women will negotiate their feminine identication in relation to such a
realm: inside, outside, on the boundary between them.

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149

Consuelo has developed certain strategies to maintain herself in the realm of

beauty. Later on in the interview she says that she looked at her old photographs
because she thinks that The images reinforce in me that Ive changed, and
I remember how I used to look . . . . This is when she was able to see how she
started losing weight, I started dressing dierently and I was less scared of showing
myself. Susan Bordo suggests that through the regulation of the time, space, and
movements of our daily lives, our bodies are trained, shaped, and impressed with
the stamp of prevailing historical forms of selfhood, desire, masculinity, femininity
(1997: 91). In these ways womens bodies become docile (Foucault, 1977), constantly managing dierent parameters of beauty, regulations of acceptability and
notions of improvement. For Bordo, [t]hrough these disciplines, we continue to
memorize on our bodies the feel and conviction of lack, of insuciency, of never
being good enough (1997: 91). However, if we extend this analysis to a context
where racist logics inict another layer of complexity, we can start thinking about
these dealings as a form of getting on, of hoping, of feeling. The struggle for
beauty is not just one for normality or for agency. It is also an arena where
penalties and pleasures are produced (Craig, 2006). Being less scared, as
Consuelo feels, is not irrelevant; it is also a way of resisting racism even if it is
not an uncompromised process, even if she needs to keep making herself up.

Conclusion: Beauty and racism

The dierence between feeling beautiful as a qualitative characteristic of the body
versus being beautiful as a supposed material, xed, ahistorical and unprejudiced
characteristic of the body might be one of the key aspects of the beauty problem.
The dierence between feeling and being beautiful results from the collision between
cultural understandings, everyday life experience about beauty, acceptable physical
appearance and skin colour. The collision presents this dilemma as impossible to
resolve (how can you be dark-skinned and beautiful?), yet, simultaneously, tells us
that while the conict exists, the possibility of questioning this dilemma surely
brings something to it a hope for its resolution or at least peaceful coexistence.
Beauty matters as it makes evident how, in its displacement and fragility, as a
feeling and resource, women could make evident to themselves and others both the
pervasiveness of racism in their everyday lives, and also some of the strategies to
resist, cope and get on. Through an analysis of womens beauty talk, I have pointed
out how feelings and desires interact with racial discourses and the construction of
the feminine. Looking and womens perceptions of the visible world become key
elements in understanding processes of discrimination and practices of racism.
Beauty is a notion in tension with the visible and becomes a primordial practice
that reveals the rules by which specic visible worlds operate: for example, the
terms and conditions of beauty in the Mexican context. John Berger writes, The
eye of the other combines with our own eye to make it fully credible that we are
part of the visible world (1972: 9). However, I want to suggest that this realisation
of the other and of our belonging to the visible world is not easy or emotion-free.

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There are gains and pains; beauty is dicult. Such a realisation not only extends to
the acknowledgement that if my gaze is informed, so is that of the other. It also
points towards the unequal ways in which such gazes are informed, the politics of
the exchange of gazes (Phelan, 1996: 4), and towards the emotionally loaded process attached to conrming we are part of the visible world. Paulina, Patricia and
Consuelo are sharing a claim to the process of personalisation of the project of
beauty, which detaches it from any social and political responsibility. If beauty is a
notion that struggles with the visible in the construction of the feminine and the
racialised body, it is a political notion too.
Feelings of lack and shame, anger and disbelief, and the willingness to improve
ones appearance, are reproduced within a social context where the omnipresent
dimension (Knight, 1990: 99) of racism and its logics operates. There is a tense
relation between beauty, the darker-skinned mestiza body and the performance of
femininity. This analysis has pointed to the accumulation of meaning that informs
a notion such as beauty in its empirical experience. When these women see themselves in a mirror, in their photographs, in the stories that others tell about them,
they cannot avoid the racial conguration of the visual world, where beauty, skin
colour, bodily features and the performance of femininity collide. To contemplate a
racial conguration of the visible is to problematise the idea of looking as an
unmediated act, and to conrm the constructed character of the informed gaze.
In such a conguration, in such a collision of regimes of dierence, several elements
come together the informed gaze, notions of beauty, feelings of shame and anger
creating the various racist moments these women talk about. The omnipresent
dimension of racism is then fully revealed when that conguration/collision occurs.
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