Black Beauty: Aesthetics, Stylization, Politics

189 Pages·2009·1.7 MB·English

by  Shirley Anne Tate

Black Beauty: Aesthetics,
Stylization, Politics
Shirley Anne Tate
Black Beauty : a esthetics,
styliza tion, Politics
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Black Beauty: a esthetics,
s tylization, Politics
shirley a nne tate
University of Leeds, UK
© shirley anne tate 2009
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
shirley anne tate has asserted her right under the copyright, Designs and Patents act,
1988, to be identi.ed as the author of this work.
Published by
ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing company
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union r oad 101 cherry street
Farnham Burlington
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
tate, shirley anne
Black beauty : aesthetics, stylization, politics
1. aesthetics, Black 2. Feminine beauty (aesthetics)
i. title
305.4'8896
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
tate, shirley anne.
Black beauty : aesthetics, stylization, politics / by shirley anne tate.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references and index.
isBn 978-0-7546-7145-9
1. Women, Black--caribbean, english-speaking--ethnic identity. 2. Women, Black--
caribbean, english-speaking--Psychology. 3. Women, Black--r ace identity--caribbean,
english-speaking. 4. Beauty, Personal--caribbean, english-speaking. 5. self-perception
in women--caribbean, english-speaking. 6. caribbean, english-speaking--social
conditions. 7. caribbean, english-speaking--r ace relations. i. title.
hQ1501.t37 2008
305.48'8969729--dc22
2008039886
isBn 978 0 7546 7145 9 (hardback)
eisBn 978 0 7546 9140 2 (ebook)
c ontents
Acknowledgements vii
introduction 1
1 ‘Beauty comes From Within’: or Does it? 17
2 anti-r acist aesthetics in the 21st century: t he Matter of hair 35
3 ‘r ace’, Beauty and Melancholia: shade 53
4 t he shame of Beauty is its transformative Potential 79
5 ‘t he Browning’, straighteners, and Fake tan 99
6 hybrid Black Beauty? 123
7 conclusion: is it all stylization and is t here a need for
Black Beauty citizenship? 145
Appendix:Transcription Conventions 161
Bibliography 163
Index 173
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a cknowledgements
i would like to dedicate this book to my brother, r odger, who died in March 2008
aged 50. i will never forget him.
i would like to thank all the women who made this book possible through
allowing me to use their thoughts and words.
t hanks Damian, soraya, Jenna, and tevian for all of your support during the
writing of this book.
i would like to thank encarnación Gutiérrez r odríguez for always pushing me
to doubt my certainties in our chats around the kitchen table.
I could not have finished this book without structured weekly time off from
the centre for interdisciplinary Gender studies, t he university of l eeds where i
work. t hanks for that. i would like to thank r uth holliday for her comments on
an early draft of chapter 1.
a version of chapter 2 appeared as ‘Black beauty: shade, hair and anti-
racist aesthetics’ in Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(2), March 2007. a version of
Chapter 5 appeared as ‘Black beauty meets feminisms’, in Marina Gržinić and
r osa r eitsamer (eds) (2007), New Feminism: Worlds of Feminism, Queer and
Networking Conditions (Vienna: l öcker Verlag).
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introduction
What is Black beauty? Does anti-racist aesthetics still have a place in its theorization
and stylizations? how can Black beauty stylizations enable a critical reading of
feminist and Black anti-racist aesthetics that challenges normative thought and
bodily practices? What does this reading mean for the continuation of Black anti-
racist politics? t he ‘aesthetics’, ‘stylization’ and ‘politics’ of the book’s title enable
the development of a discussion on Black beauty which queries essentialisms and
puts differences at its very centre so as to destabilize certainties. Black Beauty uses
postcolonial, feminist and Black anti-racist thought as a theoretical framework to
allow for readings of Black beauty which deal with both the place of subjugated
knowledge in identity politics and the making of subjectivities in the 21st century.
Black beauty is seen throughout the book as performative and as such is an ongoing
negotiation of aesthetics, stylization and politics produced through the mobility
and mobilization of beauty knowledge, stylization technologies, feminist and anti-
racist/Black nationalist ideology in the Black atlantic diaspora.
t hinking the Black atlantic as a transnational structure of feeling which links
diverse populations in a network of Black beauty ideology and practices has meant
that this book has evolved from its earlier narrow focus on the uk /us to also looking
at the caribbean and l atin america. t his focus acknowledges that Black beauty
has raised the possibility for political contestations and has subverted hegemonic
knowledge as it has reaffirmed new strategies of identification. Black beauty’s
Black atlantic diasporic roots and routes has affected whole cultures as it has
involved the shifting of socio-political not just aesthetic boundaries, transformed
discourses and changed both individual and communal identities. in this book the
shifts from the colonial to the contemporary, from the caribbean, to Britain, to the
us , to l atin america tries to capture Black beauty’s mobility and genealogies.
t hese shifts also demand that we remember that ‘race’ is performative and as such
it is not just Black beauty but also white beauty that is produced through racialized
and racializing discourses on aesthetics and race-ing stylization practices.
Feminist ideas on beauty are ‘raced’, classed and the site of othering others
(craig 2002, 2006; holliday and sanchez taylor 2006). t he feminist preoccupation
has not been with defining beauty as such. Rather the concern has been to explicate
definitions and standards of beauty and who stands to gain or lose in terms of these
norms, which has resulted in an anti-beauty position (holliday and sanchez taylor
2006). however, beauty continues to matter and so maybe we should go back to
basics, maybe we should attempt to define beauty and see where that takes us.