ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the ways Afro-Brazilian women developed and maintained their self-esteem and Afro-Brazilian identity through cultural events, such as the Black dances performed in the municipalities of Araraquara and Rio Claro in the twentieth century and the "Black Beauty Night" competition held in Salvador, Bahia, by the Ilê Ayê Cultural Association since 1975. Widely affected by racism in a mostly white space, due to decades of policies encouraging European immigration to the west of Sao Paulo, the Black community of the region created Black dances as dignified yet multidimensional spaces for Black people to socialize and valorize themselves and their community. In Bahia, in the northeast of Brazil, Afro-Brazilians did not face any less racism despite a majority Black population. There, events like Black dances and "Black Beauty Night" became spaces for discussing beauty standards and stereotypes imposed by white society, and for imagining alternate social and cultural roles for Black women. We will focus on how the women of these spaces developed their own particular aesthetic norms and celebrated their own beauty in order to better understand what it meant to be Black, and how Afro-Brazilian identities were constructed between peers, within Black communities.
