Beauty, Virtue, Power, and Success in Venezuela 18502015

By (author) Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols

Publication date:

17 August 2016

Length of book:

232 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498523646

Beauty, Virtue, Power, and Success in Venezuela 1850–2015 examines the societal duty of Venezuelan women to display and perform their inner virtue and worth through careful management of their outer physical appearance in four historical moments: 1850–1890, 1910–1950, 1960–1990, and 2000–2015. Since the early 1800’s, Venezuelan women—and more specifically, their bodies—have served as physical symbols of homeland, honor, and morality. Nichols contextualizes her study socially and historically by examining the impact of cultural phenomena like nineteenth-century eugenics, scientific motherhood, popular and elite literature, film, beauty pageants, and plastic surgery. This book tells the story of how Venezuelan women have learned to exercise and perform to societal expectations of beauty. Recommended for scholars of Latin American studies, women’s studies, gender studies, sociology, and history.

Part I: 1850–1890
Chapter 1: Productive Heterosexuality and Feminine Beauty in the Nineteenth Century
Chapter 2: Mercedes Mutis de Ibarra: The Powerlessness of Old Age
Chapter 3: Ana Teresa Ibarra de Guzmán: The (Irate) Caged Bird
Part II: 1910–1950
Chapter 4: The Ideal Mother: Decent Girls with Good Hair in the Early Twentieth Century
Chapter 5: Teresa de la Parra: The Arduous Duty to Appear Beautiful
Chapter 6: Antonia Palacios: Learning to Be Decente
Part III: 1960–1999
Chapter 7: Modern Beauty Pageants and Contests: Individual and Collective Identity
Chapter 8: Blonde and Wealthy: Strategic Beauty
Chapter 9: Stefania Mosca, Belén Valarino, and Lidia Rebrij: Cosmo Girls
Part IV: 2000–2015
Chapter 10: 100% Chic: Dressing Well to Guarantee Success in the Twenty-First Century
Chapter 11: “Exotic” and Poor: Practical Beauty
Chapter 12: Plastic Surgery: Beauty and Consumption in Twenty-First Century Venezuela

There are few studies that cover the lives, texts and contexts of Venezuelan women with the same clarity and erudition. Nichols shows the possibility of applying intersectionality as a tool of analysis to reflect on the construction of identity and capture the complexity of power relations, which is reflected in national public life around the female body. Beauty, Virtue, Power and Success in Venezuela 1850-2015 is an indispensable work for the investigation of beauty as a social phenomenon capable of promoting radical changes in the identity profile of a national community. [Translated from original Spanish]