The performativity of Black beauty shame in Jamaica and its diaspora

Problematising and transforming beauty iconicities

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4367341
AutoresShirley Anne Tate (0000-0003-3060-9880, University of Leeds, autor de correspondencia), Shirley Tate (University of Leeds)
Año2013
Volumen14
Número2
Páginas219-235
Fecha de publicación2013-08-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1464700113483250
OpenAlexW2316729439
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11
Referencias citadas27

Black beauty shame emerges within the Black/white binary because of the beauty values sedimented in our structure of feeling since African enslavement. This article does not start from white beauty as the ideal, but focuses on the performativity of Black beauty shame as it transforms or intensifies the meanings of parts of the body in Jamaica and its UK diaspora. Using extracts from interviews with UK Jamaican heritage women, the discussion illustrates how Black beauty shame produces such intensification. First, where white beauty is iconic and reproduces the Black other as 'ugly', and second, where the Black 'mixed race' body is constructed as 'other' because of Black Nationalist discourses on beauty. The women's critique of the shaming event shows that shame is undone through dis-identification as speakers draw on alternative beauty discourses to produce new beauty subjectivities. Dis-identification illustrates the transformational potential of shame as new Black beauty positionings emerge within the diaspora, drawing on beauty ideologies and models from Jamaica and thus destabilising the Black/white binary

Aesthetics · Art · Beauty · Diaspora · Performativity · Shame · Sociology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Music History and Culture · Psychology · Social Psychology