La fabrique de la beauté ethnique

Abstract

The Brazilian cosmetics industry was built around standards of beauty fostering the promotion of Euro-centred representations of femininity. If, since the late 1970s, it has focused its attention on broadening its offer of cosmetic products to black women, it has long remained limited. The emergence of a “natural movement” driven by black women, consumers and bloggers, via social media, aimed at the valorisation of afro hair, curly and frizzy, has led the industry to reconsider its approach to a segment of beauty known as “ethnic” as well as the norms it promotes. Can we talk about an effective revision of the representations and styles of femininity by the industry? What does the increased visibility of women, and more broadly, of black populations signify? Being interested in how the general cosmetics industry manufactures ethnic beauty involves taking its material and discursive productions, and how they are integrated into the structures of domination criss-crossing questions of race, gender and class, into account.

Keywords

• cosmetics industry
• Brazil
• “natural movement”
• ethnic beauty
• standards of beauty
• digital social networks