Beauty Italian Style

In this article I argue that Bartky’s ‘fashion-beauty complex’ — a major articulation of capitalist patriarchy which seeks to glorify the female body, yet covertly depreciates it — gained momentum in Italian culture at the end of the nineteenth century through the emergence of the cosmetic industry and divas’ advertising of beauty products in women’s magazines. Through a close reading of the literary culture (reviews of divas’ performances in women’s and theatre journals, as well as realist fiction), I show that the discursive construction of the Italian diva in this period was gendered: though women writers demonstrate an awareness of, and take pleasure in the diva’s ‘beauty’, but above all celebrate her skills and talents as a performing artist, male writers — without exception — pass comment on the diva’s appearance over and above a critique of her performing skills. This would suggest that ‘the beauty myth’ — the idea that a woman’s value is determined by her appearance — was an integral component of divadom in late nineteenth-century Italy, and, for male journalists and writers, an even more important attribute than the diva’s acting or singing abilities

Aesthetics · Art · Articulation (sociology · Beauty · Femininity · Literature · Pleasure · Sociology · Style (visual arts · Decadence, Literature, and Society · Gender Studies · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Psychology

• You have to be clean

  Andrea L Demaria, Sydney Rivera et al.•Culture Health & Sexuality•2021

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