The Price of Pretty: Race, Representation, and The Politics of Beauty in Brazil

Abstract

This thesis examines how beauty in Brazil functions as a racialized and gendered form of social capital, shaping who is seen, who belongs, and who advances. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro—including non-participant observation, informal conversations, and semi-structured interviews with young Brazilian women in their 20s from diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds—I explore how Eurocentric beauty standards privilege whiteness while marginalizing Black and Indigenous features. I argue that these standards shape women's access to opportunity, social legitimacy, and economic mobility. I take a very narrative, story-telling approach to explain that for the women I interviewed—Camila, Ana Clara, Mariana, Bianca, and Marcela (names changed for anonymity)—beauty is not simply about self-expression; it becomes a strategic and emotional negotiation tied to survival and advancement. Drawing from postcolonial theory and critical social theory, I analyze the works of Frantz Fanon and Pierre Bourdieu to show how beauty standards operate as disciplinary forces that reinforce Brazil’s colonial racial hierarchies. I highlight how my interlocutors wrestle with the prioritization of whiteness across Brazil’s social structures, media, and professional spaces, while also carving out spaces of resistance through community-building, digital activism, and personal storytelling. Ultimately, this thesis reveals how embodied aesthetics are governed by systemic forces of inequality—yet also how beauty becomes a site of creativity, resilience, and political assertion in contemporary Brazil.