Performing Beauty: Femininity Ideology, Neoliberalism and
Aesthetic Labor among Young Women in Mexico
CONSSTRUYENDO
la belleza: feminidad, neoliberalismo y trabajo estético entre las mujeres
jóvenes de México
Shoba Arun[2]
This research is motivated by the norms
and practices of femininity that individuals create through performances and
bodily practices. It investigates the levels of women’s acceptance of the
femininity ideology and neoliberalism in the upper middle class, their effects
on aesthetic labor and the objectification of their bodies. It examines how the
logic and techniques associated with neoliberalism shapes the construction of
current femininities and shifts in the relationship between the self and the
body. Through the use of quantitative analysis from data based on young middle
class women in Monterrey, Mexico, this study aims to determine how women are
making sense of their bodies through self-discipline and self-regulation, as
well as the ways in which neoliberal and postfeminist constructions of the
sexual self and body are made meaningful in women’s everyday lives.
Keywords: femininity,
neoliberalism, postfeminist, beauty, aesthetic labor
Resumen
Esta investigación está motivada por las normas y
prácticas de feminidad que las personas crean a través de actuaciones y
prácticas corporales. Investigando los niveles de aceptación de las mujeres de
la ideología de la feminidad y el neoliberalismo en la clase media alta, sus
efectos sobre el trabajo estético y la objetivación de sus cuerpos. Examinando
cómo el neoliberalismo configura la construcción de las feminidades actuales y
la relación entre el yo y el cuerpo. Se utilizó una metodología cuantitativa
para analizar los datos recopilados de 100 mujeres jóvenes de clase media en
Monterrey, México, este estudio tiene como objetivo determinar cómo las mujeres
dan sentido a sus cuerpos a través de la autodisciplina y la autorregulación,
así como las formas en que las personas y construcciones neoliberales postfeministas
del yo y el cuerpo sexuales tienen sentido en la vida cotidiana de las mujeres.
Palabras clave: feminidad,
neoliberalismo, posfeminismo, belleza, trabajo estético
recepción:15 de agosto de 2019/ aceptación: 13
de enero de 2020
We would like to thank EuroInka, the Europe and
Latin America Sustainable Innovation and Knowledge Academic Network
for the opportunity to conduct aesthetic feminist reaserch
in Mexico.
Introduction
With the expansion
of a neo-liberal consumerist economy, a hegemonic beauty ideal has been widely
spread in a generalized manner. This has affected the way women think and
present themselves, and consequently make them incur in exaggerated efforts and
practices to achieve beauty standards often alien to their race and culture. As
vain as beauty ideals might seem, they have a direct link with bodies and identity,
and as this research proves, with neoliberalism and femininity ideology. The
structure of the paper is as follows. First the paper sets out review of key
debates related to femininity, bodily and aesthetic practices that is
profoundly affected by neoliberal regimes. It then proceeds to examine
contemporary Mexico, the study region which is vastly transformed by neoliberal
practices, after which the data and methods are detailed. The final section
examines the key findings and relevance of the research in gender studies.
Making sense of femininity, beauty and bodies in a neo-liberal regime
The politics of beauty remain a key
of set issues and debates for feminism, one that is stuck in polarized
positions, stressing oppression versus pleasure and agency versus cultural
domination. Bodies are made in a historical time with respect to class, gender,
geography and aspiration, with important questions about how women are making
sense of themselves, managing the struggle of agency, subjectivity and
self-expression with increasing commercialization of the body, mediated by
processes of globalization and westernization. A number of studies have looked
at the links between beauty and gender inequalities, the most recent explore
the role of labor and neoliberalism, but few explore the connection between
femininity, neoliberalism and surveillance.
One can examine the politics
of fundamental appearance to the feminism that emerged in the West in the 1960s
and after, with beauty taking its place alongside reproductive rights, violence
against women, workplace and pay equality, and sexual freedom as a key issue of
the feminist concern. Perspectives on Foucauldian feminism that regards beauty
as a disciplinary technology which argues that women’s appearance is subject to
profound discipline and regulation –even when beauty practices are seemingly
freely chosen (Elias, Gil & Scharff, 2017). Further
aesthetic labor and female performance as a form of currency and the role of
neoliberalism in reshaping femininity and gender practices, helps portray the
complexities and contradictions involved in how gender and depictions of
femininity are learned and enacted. Simone de Beauvoir said that one is not
born a woman, but rather becomes one through constraint and discipline, since
the norms and practices of femininity have been acculturated and socially
constructed by language, visual images and binary oppositions
Wittig (1992) pointed
out how women (and increasingly men) are dominated and disciplined into various
forms of media, that constitute a discourse of how gender must be performed. To
become a woman one must be tall, skinny, white, pretty, feminine, sexually
available, and liberated
Just like femininity,
sexual experience is conditioned by the social world and does not operate
outside the process of gendering, sexualization and
classing
Dominant contemporary
popular culture messages suggest that women’s power comes from sexuality,
requiring them to consume products into making their lives pleasurable through
self-monitoring, feeling sexy and looking good
The right body is
broadcasted as a way of belonging to the world and as seemingly available to
everyone, creating a democratic call for beauty in an increasingly homogenized
and homogenizing form, creating narrower beauty ideals (Orbach, 2016). Increasingly, new forms of media continue to
reinforce gender roles and female stereotypes that are over represented with emphasis
on women’s youth, thinness, whiteness, heterosexuality, beauty and sexiness
Neoliberalism as a form of
governance argues that market forces should be allowed to drive the economy. Its
initial rise associated with the neoliberal regime shift in Britain and the US
in the late 1970s following which western neoliberal forces and international
institutions were heavily promoted in the 1990s, generating policy adjustments
and structural changes
Such neoliberal
restructuring led to an increase in women’s productive role, especially in
Mexican rural cities, involving them in income-generating labor as a
counterpart to their migrant spouses’ remittances. However, this is not always
the case, as, in 2017, 29% of the households were female-headed, making women’s
income the only support in some domestic groups
Mexico is witnessing the
rise of new gendered sexual subjectivities and agencies that have arisen from
the spaces where neoliberalism, post-feminism and consumerism fuse, creating a
new normative expectation that offers a different articulation of feminine
identity. The global creation of neoliberal individualized self-regulating subjects,
that shares the responsibility with the population enabling them to manage
themselves is seen, as according to Foucault, a new form of governance (see
Evans & Riley, 2015). The fear of being misidentified disciplines both men
and women, resulting in individuals behaving in manly and womanly ways,
according to the standards of his or her culture
This increased surveillance
culture and aesthetic labour fostered by capitalist
and neo-liberal patriarchy raises interesting questions for Mexican women and
their bodies. It is within the insatiable intensity of bodily practices that
fuses with traditional gender roles, economic and social inequalities and
internalized racism that the Mexican “look” has been achieved
This beauty ideal has
consequences for both men and women since “people
with lighter skin are directors, bosses or professionals, those with darker
skins are artisans, operators or support workers”
Further media has
displayed and perpetuated ideas regarding beauty and skin color, showing in
telenovelas the dark-skinned woman as the maid and her blond counterpart as the
house-owner
This research sought to focus on
both traditional femininity and neoliberalism and their relationship with
aesthetic labor. Based on this, the main research focused on two main questions:
a) Is there a relationship between the femininity ideology acceptance and the
objectification of the female body? and b) Is there a relationship between the
acceptance of neoliberal perceptions and the objectification of the female
body?
The study aims were accomplished
by fulfilling the following objectives: identifying the acceptance of
traditional femininity ideology, recognizing the acceptance of neoliberal
perceptions, and analyzing the degree to which participants objectify their own
bodies. By recognizing these three areas, it was possible to determine if there
is a relationship among them, thus proposing the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1 (H1): With a higher acceptance of femininity ideology there is a
higher objectification of the female body. Hypothesis 2 (H2): With a higher
acceptance of neoliberal ideas there is a higher objectification of the female
body. Hypothesis 3 (H3): Social class will influence femininity ideology acceptance.
Hypothesis 4 (H4): Social class will influence the acceptance of neoliberal
perceptions. Hypothesis 5 (H5): Heterosexual women will accept femininity
ideology more than homosexual and bisexual women. Hypothesis 6 (H6):
Heterosexual women will objectify the female body more than homosexual and
bisexual women.
This research is largely
exploratory, transversal and with a unifactorial
design. The degree to which respondents endorse traditional femininity
ideology, surveillance, body-shame, and appearance control beliefs were
evaluated through standardized quantitative inventories, and neoliberal
agreement through a questionnaire of perceptions. The sample of this study was
composed of female university students in the State of Nuevo León, México, in
San Pedro Garza García. A range of ages between 18
and 27 was considered.
The type of sampling was
non-random probabilistic. A total sample of 100 female university students aged
18-27 years, with a mean age of 20.57 and a standard deviation of 1.56, were
included in this study. All of the students belong to private university and
responded in their facilities. Around 30% of the participants identified
themselves as white or European descent, 63% as mestizos
or mixed race, 2% Asian, 1 % as afro-Mexican, 1% Indigenous and the remaining
3% as other race. Most participants classified themselves as middle or high
class, with 5% of them in lower middle, 81% in upper middle and 14% in lower
high class. Questions were presented in the same order to all participants:
demographic questions, Adolescent Femininity Ideology Scale, the Objectified
Body Consciousness Scale, and the Neoliberal Perceptions Questionnaire. All
participants completed the questionnaire in Spanish since it is Mexico’s
official language. All participants were asked their age, sex, sexual
orientation, race and social class. All the demographic data, except age, were
treated as categorical for statistical analysis purposes. Race and social class
were in accordance with the categories proposed by the INEGI and the Profeco.
The Adolescent
Femininity Ideology Scale (AFIS), a
20-item scale composed of two subscales, has acceptable internal consistency
and temporal stability, and is grounded in girls’ own words, was used to
measure the extent to which adolescent girls have internalized or resisted two
negative conventions of femininity in two psychological domains: experience of
self in relationships with others and relationship with one’s body
Statistical analysis was
performed using the IBM SPSS program. Once the quantitative data was organized
and captured, a reliability analysis was first run to study the properties of
the scales.
A total sample of 100 female
university students aged 18-27 years, with a mean age of 20.57 and a standard
deviation of 1.56, were included in this study. Racial groups and social class
were limited and showed almost no diversity (See Table 1). Both aspects where
self-identified by the participant, in the case of class a table portraying the
composition of each class making it easier for the participant to identify
which group did she belong to (See Table 11).
Table 1
Descriptive statistics of the sample
|
|
Frequency |
Percentage |
|
Sexual Orientation |
|
|
|
Heterosexual |
89 |
89% |
|
Bisexual |
7 |
7% |
|
Homosexual |
4 |
4% |
|
Age |
|
|
|
18 |
8 |
8% |
|
19 |
16 |
16% |
|
20 |
28 |
28% |
|
21 |
23 |
23% |
|
22 |
15 |
15% |
|
23 |
7 |
7% |
|
24 |
2 |
2% |
|
25 |
- |
- |
|
26 |
- |
- |
|
27 |
1 |
1% |
|
Race |
|
|
|
European
descent |
30 |
30% |
|
Mixed Race |
63 |
63% |
|
Indigenous |
1 |
1% |
|
Afro-Mexican |
1 |
1% |
|
Asian |
2 |
2% |
|
Other |
3 |
3% |
|
Social Class |
|
|
|
Lower Low |
- |
- |
|
Upper Low |
- |
- |
|
Lower Middle |
5 |
5% |
|
Upper Middle |
81 |
81% |
|
Lower High |
14 |
14% |
|
Upper High |
- |
- |
Reliability analyses were run in the
three scales used. The Adolescent Femininity Ideology Scale had a good internal
consistency (α =.572), as did its ISR and OBR
subscales, with an internal consistence of (α =.472) and (α =.404) respectively. The OBC with a
Cronbach’s Alpha of (α =.609) is divided into three
subscales, the first, Surveillance, has a good internal consistency of (α =.394), the second, Body Shame and Control Beliefs also with a
Cronbach’s Alpha of (α =.499) and (α =.462) correspondingly. Finally, Neoliberal Principals has an internal
consistency of (α =.212).
A descriptive analysis of the three scales used was applied
in order to compare them with the development and validation studies and
determine whether they represent a higher, lower or the same acceptance of the
femininity ideology, objectified body consciousness and neoliberalism. The
AFIS was developed to measure adolescent girls’ internalization of two negative
aspects of femininity ideology through the use of two ten-item subscales, the
ISH and the ORB. Although they were initially intended to be used separately,
this research used them together to substitute the FIS, the scale that was
originally intended to be used for the same. After the pilot research, using
the FIS proved insignificant, so this version for younger women was explored,
especially since it showed two constructs of the femininity ideology, focusing
on surveillance and objectification of the body in one area, and the inauthentic
relationship with the self.
The
AFIS has good psychometric properties, adequate internal consistency and
temporal stability. The ISR subscale in this research has a slightly lower mean
than the one found in first year of college by Tolman
(2000), with a mean of 3.0480 compared to that of 3.2910. The OBR has a mean of
2.94, lower that the one of first-year college students of 3.575.
The
OBC was developed to measure objectified body consciousness in women, focusing
on three subscales: surveillance, body shame and appearance control beliefs.
Higher levels of OBC are theorized to lead to negative body experiences for
women. This scale relies on the assumption that women are responsible for how
their bodies look and can, given enough effort, control their appearance to
comply with cultural standards. Making them accept that they are responsible
for how they look, and that attractiveness is a reasonable standard by which to
judge themselves, seeing beauty as a personal choice with which to conform. The
total score is calculated by finding the sum of the 21 items, after reverse
coding. The total score ranges from 24-168, with a higher score indicating a
higher body consciousness. The means of the OBC and its subscales in this
research portray a medium to high body consciousness, as portrayed in Table 2.
The
neoliberal perceptions include a series of statements that relate to neoliberal
ideas, having a mean of 4.1 indicate acceptance of neoliberalism in general. It
was expected that a mean of 3.5 would indicate the highest acceptance possible
and anything higher or lower would simply decrease acceptance of neoliberal
ideas.
Table 2
Descriptive Statistics
|
|
Mean |
Standard
Deviation |
|
AFIS |
2.9945 |
0.42284 |
|
ISR |
3.0480 |
0.52310 |
|
OBR |
2.9400 |
0.51561 |
|
OBC |
3.3357 |
0.50622 |
|
Surveillance |
3.5500 |
0.64794 |
|
Body Shame |
3.0327 |
0.79569 |
|
Control |
3,4237 |
0.79569 |
|
NP |
4.1260 |
0.57623 |
Hypothesis 1: Acceptance of femininity ideology and the
objectified body consciousness.
A Bivariate Pearson Correlation was completed between
the means of the AFIS and the OBC, taking into consideration all of their
respective subscales. The examination found out that there is a relationship
between the acceptance of femininity ideology and the objectified body
consciousness with p=0.017 and r=0.238 (Table 3). Proving the first hypothesis:
with a higher acceptance of femininity ideology there is a higher
objectification of the female body.
Table 3
Bivariate Person Correlation between AFIS and OBC
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hypothesis 2: Acceptance of neoliberal ideas and the
objectification of the female body.
The second hypothesis, with a higher
acceptance of neoliberal ideas there is a higher objectification of the female
body was proven with a Bivariate Pearson Correlation
was completed between the means of the OBC and the NP. This analysis proved
there is a relationship between the acceptance of neoliberalism and the
objectification of the female body with a p=0.026 and r=0,238 as portrayed
below.
Table 4
Bivariate Person Correlation between OBC and NP
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hypothesis 3 & 4: Social class and the acceptance
of femininity ideology and neoliberal perceptions.
Hypotheses three through five used a T-test for
independent samples. Hypotheses three and four used a T-test for independent
sample to measure the relationship between social class and the acceptance of
femininity ideology and neoliberal perceptions, both were disregarded since they
were not supported by the data.
Social class also seemed
insignificant in predicting the internalization of femininity ideology, showing
no real difference between the answers of the participants who identified
themselves as members of the lower middle class and the lower high class. The
lower middle class was compared with the lower high class since they represent
the lowest and highest classes found in the sample. The results show no real
relation between class and acceptance of the femininity ideology with a p=0.213
and a t=1,008, disregarding Hypothesis 3 (H3).
Table 5
Group Statistics
|
|
Social Class |
N |
Mean |
Std. Deviation |
Std. Error Mean |
|
Mean AFIS |
Lower High |
14 |
2.9321 |
.55318 |
.14784 |
|
|
Lower Middle |
5 |
3.1800 |
.27973 |
.12510 |
Independent Samples Test
|
|
Levene’s Test for
Equality of Variances |
T-test for Equality of Means |
|||||||||
|
F |
Sig. |
t |
Df |
Sig. (2-tailed) |
Man Difference |
Std. Error
Difference |
95% Confidence
Interval of the Difference |
||||
|
Lower |
Upper |
||||||||||
|
Mean AFIS |
Equal
variances assumed |
1.676 |
.213 |
-.947 |
17 |
.357 |
-.24786 |
.26175 |
-.80010 |
.30438 |
|
|
Equal
variances not assumed |
|
|
-1.280 |
14.358 |
.221 |
-.24786 |
.19367 |
-.66226 |
.16655 |
||
Hypothesis 4 (H4): Social class will
influence the acceptance of neoliberal perceptions was also insignificant. A T
test was run to analyze the relationship between class and the acceptance of
neoliberal perceptions. Just as in all the previous tests regarding social
class, the results are insignificant with p=.654 and t=.198 as seen below.
Table 6
Group Statistics
|
|
Social Class |
N |
Mean |
Std. Deviation |
Std. Error Mean |
|
Mean NP |
Lower High |
14 |
3.9500 |
.53887 |
.14402 |
|
|
Lower Middle |
5 |
3.9000 |
.46368 |
.20736 |
Independent Samples Test
|
|
Levene’s Test for
Equality of Variances |
T-test for Equality of Means |
|||||||||
|
F |
Sig. |
t |
Df |
Sig. (2-tailed) |
Man Difference |
Std. Error
Difference |
95% Confidence
Interval of the Difference |
||||
|
Lower |
Upper |
||||||||||
|
Mean AFIS |
Equal
variances assumed |
.208 |
.654 |
.184 |
17 |
.856 |
.05000 |
.27204 |
-.52395 |
.62395 |
|
|
Equal
variances not assumed |
|
|
.198 |
8.202 |
.848 |
.05000 |
.25247 |
-.52971 |
.62971 |
||
Hypothesis 5: Acceptance of femininity ideology and
sexual orientation
Sexual
orientation had the most significant results in comparison to social class or
race, partially accepting the last two hypotheses. A T-test showed a marginal
significance between the acceptance of femininity ideology and sexual
orientation. As seen in the table below, heterosexuals tend to accept
femininity ideas more than homosexuals, with a p=0.052 and a t=0.154 (Table 7).
Thus, marginally accepting Hypothesis 5 (H5): Heterosexual women will accept
femininity ideology more than homosexual and bisexual women.
Table 7
Group Statistics
|
|
Sexual Orientation |
N |
Mean |
Std. Deviation |
Std. Error Mean |
|
Mean FIS |
Heterosexual |
89 |
2.9837 |
.43378 |
.04598 |
|
|
Homosexual |
4 |
2.9500 |
.10801 |
.05401 |
Independent Samples Test
|
|
Levene’s Test for
Equality of Variances |
T-test for Equality of Means |
|
||||||||
|
F |
Sig. |
t |
Df |
Sig. (2-tailed) |
Man Difference |
Std. Error
Difference |
95% Confidence
Interval of the Difference |
||||
|
Lower |
Upper |
||||||||||
|
Mean AFIS |
Equal
variances assumed |
3.874 |
.052 |
.154 |
91 |
.878 |
.03371 |
.21826 |
-.39983 |
.46725 |
|
|
Equal
variances not assumed |
|
|
.475 |
8.769 |
.646 |
.03371 |
.07093 |
-.12739 |
.19481 |
||
Hypothesis 6 (H6): Heterosexual
women will objectify the female body more than homosexual and bisexual women.
While
running both a T-test and an ANOVA comparing the three groups with the OBC
scale, the results proved insignificant. Three T-tests were run to analyze the
relationship of sexual orientation with the objectification of the female body.
The first two compared the relationship with body objectification consciousness
of heterosexuals and bisexuals, and heterosexuals and homosexuals, showing
insignificant results with a p=0.157 and p=0.737 respectively. The last T-test
compared the relationship between sexual orientation and body control beliefs
of bisexuals and homosexuals, portraying marginal significance. Later an ANOVA
test was run and denied this relationship with a p=0.596, while confirming
there is no relationship between any sexual orientation and OBC (See Table 8).
Table 8
ANOVA: Mean OBC
|
|
Sum of Squares |
df |
Mean Square |
F |
Sig |
|
Between Groups |
.269 |
2 |
.134 |
.519 |
.596 |
|
Within Groups |
25.101 |
97 |
.259 |
|
|
|
Total |
25.370 |
99 |
|
|
|
Post Hoc Tests
Multiple Comparisons
Dependent Variable: Mean OBC
Scheffe
|
Sexual Orientation |
Sexual
Orientation |
Mean Difference |
Std. Error |
Sig. |
95% Confidence
Interval |
|
|
Lower Bound |
Upper Bound |
|||||
|
Heterosexual |
Bisexual |
.08363 |
.19969 |
.916 |
-.4128 |
.5801 |
|
Homosexual |
.24732 |
.26000 |
.637 |
-.3990 |
.8937 |
|
|
Bisexual |
Heterosexual |
-.08363 |
.19969 |
.916 |
-.5801 |
.4128 |
|
Homosexual |
.16369 |
.31884 |
.877 |
-.6290 |
.9563 |
|
|
Homosexual |
Heterosexual |
-.24732 |
.26000 |
.637 |
-.8937 |
.3990 |
|
Bisexual |
-.16369 |
.31884 |
.877 |
-.9563 |
.6290 |
|
However, when running the T-test
with the AFIS subscale of body objectification the ORB, portraying a
significant relationship among the two concepts. Heterosexual and homosexual
women seem to accept more the ORB, the second subscale composed of 10 items.
Two T-tests were run, the first showed that bisexual women tend to accept the
ORB more than homosexual women with a p=0.048 and a t=.723 (Table 9), and the
second showed that heterosexual women accept the ORB more than homosexual women
with a p=0.015 and t=1.860 (Table 10).
Table 9
Group Statistics
|
|
Sexual Orientation |
N |
Mean |
Std. Deviation |
Std. Error Mean |
|
Mean FIS_ORB |
Bisexual |
7 |
3.0000 |
.59161 |
.22361 |
|
|
Homosexual |
4 |
2.4750 |
.09574 |
.04787 |
Independent Samples Test
|
|
Levene’s Test for
Equality of Variances |
T-test for Equality of Means |
||||||||
|
F |
Sig. |
t |
Df |
Sig. (2-tailed) |
Man Difference |
Std. Error Difference |
95% Confidence
Interval of the Difference |
|||
|
Lower |
Upper |
|||||||||
|
Mean AFIS |
Equal
variances assumed |
5.210 |
.048 |
1.723 |
9 |
.119 |
.52500 |
.30474 |
-.16437 |
1.21437 |
|
Equal
variances not assumed |
|
|
2.296 |
6.535 |
.058 |
.52500 |
.22867 |
-.02362 |
1.07362 |
|
Table 10
Group Statistics
|
|
Sexual Orientation |
N |
Mean |
Std. Deviation |
Std. Error Mean |
|
Mean FIS_ORB |
Heterosexual |
89 |
2.9562 |
.51433 |
.05452 |
|
|
Homosexual |
4 |
2.4750 |
.09574 |
.04787 |
Independent Samples Test
|
|
Levene’s Test for
Equality of Variances |
T-test for Equality of Means |
||||||||
|
F |
Sig. |
t |
Df |
Sig. (2-tailed) |
Man Difference |
Std. Error
Difference |
95% Confidence
Interval of the Difference |
|||
|
Lower |
Upper |
|||||||||
|
Mean AFIS |
Equal
variances assumed |
6.177 |
.015 |
1.860 |
91 |
.066 |
.48118 |
.25866 |
-.03262 |
.99498 |
|
Equal
variances not assumed |
|
|
6.632 |
14.970 |
.000 |
.48118 |
.07255 |
.32651 |
.63585 |
|
Beauty
is pain: Aesthetic labor in Performing Femininities
As observed in the study, the
participants that accept femininity ideology more tend to objectify their
bodies more, participating more deeply in self-surveillance and self-discipline
regimes. Thinking of gender as a performance conditions women into living their
femininity as such, acting in “common-sense” ways that socialize them to be
thin, sexy, suggestive, padded, tanned when white, bleached when brown, shaved,
plucked and waxed
The reproduction of
these codes and behaviors is extremely powerful because they constitute
identity, showing where individuals come from, underpinning how they wish to be
seen, and giving pleasure and gain to bodily codes (Orbach, 2017). This process can be seen in Mexican femininities.
The preparation of quinceañeras,
a rite of passage from girl to woman, successful femininities are grounded in
profound cultural meanings. Through the use of make-up, fashion and family
events, young women present themselves in society by accepting and implementing
discipling practices to make them the most beautiful
possible versions of themselves, and accepting that this should be the way they
present themselves from that moment on, reproducing gender and heteronormative
identities, making girls eligible for suitors and placing the importance of
their self in their looks
The link between
femininity and beauty is clearly seen in the way Mexican women negotiate their
identities. Being the fourth country with the most plastic surgeries
The
only way is up: Self-regulation and Responsibility in Neoliberal Beauty
Most of the recent work on beauty
raises questions around race, class, nation, religion, and colonial and
imperial dynamics. The second aim of this research is to link beauty work with
neoliberalism and the ideas it promotes. The impulse of the free market, the
signing of NAFTA and Mexico’s entry to GATT has given a whole new context to
individuals and how they see and construct themselves (Méndez Morales, 2012).
The demands of the postindustrial body celebrate fragmentation, making it a
series of visual images and a labor process. Individual bodies cannot measure
up if they are not manufactured to today’s standards (Orbach,
2016).
While
many argue that NAFTA and the neoliberal regime promote and delimit new forms
of female agency, others suggest that they have caused new forms of labor and
violence against women, emphasizing in particular the role of beauty, as Wolf
Either
pleasure or violence, the assimilation of beauty norms is rapidly increasing;
women worldwide are trying to create the perfect image for themselves. The
false perception of ideal beauty as a narrow set of characteristics only serves
to position woman as feeling inadequate and unacceptable. However, they are
conditioned to continue working on constructing the best versions of themselves
through gain, pleasure and socialization
Beauty beyond class boundaries
Most of the participants are upper
middle class, this was self-defined by the participants according to the
information showed in Table 11.
Table
11
Class Composition according to the PROFECO
|
Lower-Low |
Temporary workers, immigrants, informal traders,
the unemployed and people living on welfare. |
Upper-Middle |
Businessmen and professionals who have triumphed |
|
Upper-Low |
Workers and peasants. |
Lower-Upper |
Families that are rich, but few generations ago |
|
Lower-Middle |
Clerks, supervisors and skilled artisans. |
Upper-Upper |
Old rich families, prominent for several
generations |
Theory confirms that extremes of
body dissatisfaction, and accompanying eating disorders, are often
conceptualized as the province of young, middle-class, European-American women,
researchers have only begun to explore the relationship of cultural body standards
to body esteem in other groups of women and are finding other women may be both
protected from and multiply oppressed by cultural body standards
Although
there are a few participants from the lower middle class and lower upper class,
it could be said it is a homogenous sample. The major difference between the
upper middle-class and lower upper-class composition is the number of
generations that have been considered rich. Members of the middle class can be
newly rich while members of the upper class must have been rich for a few
generations. However, since their income, jobs, education, and life experiences
might be quite similar, UDEM students comprise a very homogenous group,
disregarding the small differences among classes. This leads us to believe that
any conclusions about body experience, acceptance of femininity ideology and
neoliberalism are limited, and more groups should be surveyed. It is not
possible to disregard class as an influencer towards femininity ideology
acceptance. The insignificance of the results relay on the homogeneity of the
sample, not in the role of class for the acceptance of traditional femininity,
since, most theory suggest otherwise.
Complexities
of Sexuality and Heteronormativity
Sex is an important aspect of
aesthetic labor, ever since the introduction of beauty pornography (i.e. the
hypersexual representations of women in mainstream media), beauty has been
linked and commodified explicitly to sexuality. Women’s behavior is noticed and
labelled sexual even if it is not intended as such, giving them another area to
discipline and surveil, in which they need to become feminine, but not too
feminine, sexy, but not too sexy, following informal rules and guidelines about
the appropriateness of appearance. This introduces new complexities and
contradictions in which women wish to be considered desirable, attractive and
responsible neoliberal subjects without entering into the dangerous zone of
being over or under feminine and sexual
Why
is it so important to be considered a feminine, sexual, beautiful subject?
There is much to gain from being traditionally pretty and sexy, but so much
more to lose. When women step away from conventional femininity their safety
can be in jeopardy. Morales, et al.
There
was an effort to include women who belong to sexual minorities in this
research. Since the internalization of the domains of femininity ideology
proposed by AFIS are seen as a form of oppression, it is especially important
to see how they function with groups of women who are systematically oppressed
because they don’t conform to another domain of hegemonic femininity ideology,
namely, heterosexuality, as well as evaluating how it relates to other scales
that measure the specific effects of women’s objectification of their bodies,
in this case the OBC (See Tolman and Porche, 2000).
Interestingly,
sexualization operates inside the process of
gendering, racialization and classing, further intersected by age and
heteronormativity. This leads to highly patterned, exclusive and limited
representations of sexualized women, where only some women can be sexual subjects: those who are young, white,
heterosexual and conventionally attractive
Although
sexual orientation does have an effect on how women construct femininity and
the degree to which they accept traditional feminine ideals, it has little to
no effect on how much they objectify their bodies. Neoliberalism becomes the
key predictor for objectification in this case. Marxian theory states that the
economic system and production would determine other aspects of the self,
including the responsibility of the self, suggesting surveillance and
self-discipline as the only available schema. However, Gayle Rubin’s critical
theory of the exchange of women and the sex/gender system identifies a system
of hierarchical relations between men and women, connecting the theory of
patriarchy with a more developed line of thought regarding how the suppression
of women also leads to the suppression of different sexualities and identities,
leading to the suppression of transgressive or non-conventional femininities
As
mentioned throughout the results, the sample of this study was very homogenous,
which would lead to believe that more groups of women should be surveyed to
make definite conclusions about the body experience of all Mexican women.
Besides the homogeneity of the sample, there was another major limitation.
Given that femininity ideology is a social construction and the hegemonic
cultural conventions associated with femininity shift over time, the AFIS and
the OBC could, and should, be updated. As mentioned in the methodology, this
research intended to use the Femininity Ideology Scale, but in a pilot sample
it proved obsolete, which lead to the use of another scale. However, the AFIS
would have been more efficient if it had been updated and regionalized
appropriately. Lastly, understanding the process of how women come to construct
their identities, perform their femininity, relate to their bodies, and develop
objectified relationships with their bodies, requires qualitative approaches.
Quantitative data, in this case, gives an understanding, but ignores
individualities, losing some of the richness in the topic of femininity and
aesthetic labor.
Conclusions
This research contributes to the
growing literature on the social perception of femininity ideology and aesthetic
labor in the Mexican context and introduces new forms of analyzing its
relationship with neoliberalism. The internalizations of conventions regulating
how women are supposed to look and behave have been identified through
qualitative analyses, investigating the scope and strength of relationships
between the domain of femininity ideology and neoliberalism and aesthetic
labor, focusing on three quantifiable outcomes: body shame, surveillance and
control beliefs.
The main motivation of
this research was to analyze the relationship between aesthetic labor, which
was often referred to in this study as objectification of the female body or
the self, and two ideologies: femininity and neoliberalism. Using two scales,
the AFIS and the OBC and a neoliberal perception questionnaire, a quantitative
analysis was undertaken. The analysis was carried out with the premise of
choice, agency and personal responsibility, core themes in neoliberalism, as
well as Foucauldian feminism (1988), namely the contract between the
(objectifying) technologies of domination of others and the (subjectifying) technologies of the self. This perspective
regards beauty as a disciplinary technology, arguing that women’s appearance is
subject to profound discipline and regulation –even when beauty practices are
seemingly freely chosen.
This is not the first
study to measure femininity as a social construction. However, it evaluates how
women are negotiating a widespread and oppressive ideology and investigates the
role and effects of such ideology in behaviors, self-discipline and
responsibility, thus helping to achieve a better understanding of how
femininity is performed and constructed, its relationship with sexuality and
economics. This perspective makes obvious the effects of neoliberalism in
self-objectification, since neoliberal subjects are expected to devise and
implement their own self-improvement practices.
In addition, the
findings are relevant since the sample includes a larger number of minorities,
especially in the realm of sexual orientation, groups that are not usually
thought of as high risk for body image disturbance. Also, Mexico was chosen as
the canvas for the research. Latinas have been used as an ethnic group in
American research, but it is one of the few research undertakings that use a
Latin-American country to study aesthetic labor, providing interesting data on
differing experiences of women across the globe and the relevance of
objectified body consciousness across diverse groups of women.
The findings demonstrate
that accepting both traditional femininity and neoliberalism has a fundamental
effect on females’ objectification of their own body, or aesthetic labor. The
use of feminist theory and the sociological perspective is an enriching
addition to current psychological knowledge of women’s body experience. The
emphasis on social context, both in social constructions of the body and
external pressure for objectification, is important in order to add
individualizing accounts for body dissatisfaction.
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