ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on beauty through a transnational feminist framework. It identifies key debates relating to globalization, nationalism, and imperialism. Beauty acts as a symbol of status, power, and reputation. For example, through important cultural signifiers, like beauty pageants and cosmetic surgery, gendered and racialized structural forces impact individuals and their communities. Further, the chapter highlights the relationship between structure and agency, identifying how they inform one another. Finally, this chapter aims to both complicate and clarify the means by which global power is informed and reproduced through representations of beauty.
