Beauty and the Norm

Claudia Liebelt, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at Bayreuth University, Germany. Her primary research interests are gender, beauty and body aesthetics, intimate labor, embodiment, and Islam in Turkey.

Sarah Böllinger, M.A., is Ph.D. Candidate and Junior Fellow of the International Graduate School of African Studies at Bayreuth University, Germany. She is the director of becks, the administrative department for disabled and chronically ill students.

Ulf Vierke, Ph.D., is Director of Iwalewahaus, the Museum for Contemporary African Arts, at Bayreuth University, Germany. He also acts as the Head of DEVA, the Digital Research Archive of African Studies.

Recent decades have seen the rise of a global beauty boom, with profound effects on perceptions of bodies worldwide. Against this background, Beauty and the Norm assembles ethnographic and conceptual approaches from a variety of disciplines and across the globe to debate standardization in bodily appearance. Its contributions range from empirical research to exploratory conversations between scholars and personal reflections.  Bridging hitherto separate debates in critical beauty studies, cultural anthropology, sociology, the history of science, disability studies, gender studies, and critical race studies, this volume reflects upon the gendered, classed, and racialized body, normative regimes of representation, and the global beauty economy. 

1. Introduction: Changing Beauty: Doing and Undoing Norms.- 2. Stephan Bibrowski, The "Lion Man," And The Changing Face Of Normative Middle-Class Masculinity In Bohemia Around 1900.- 3. Quantifying Beauty: How Bathroom Scales Shaped Aesthetic Norms In The Dutch Interbellum.- 4. Debating Bodily Standardization In The Global Beauty Boom/A Conversation.- 5. From Freak To Quirk Model: The Spectacularization Of The Albinotic Body.- 6. Prabuddha Dasgupta's Alternative Indian Advertising Beauties.- 7. Broken Beauty, Broken Cups: Disabled Bodies In Contemporary African Art.- 8. "Disability Gain" And the Limits Of Representing Alternative Beauty / A Conversation.- 9. Fashioning the Female Muslim Body: From "Hiding Beauty" To "Managing Beauty".- 10. Being Fat, But How? On The Material and Interactional Co-Constitution Of Self-Perception In Weight Watchers Meetings And The Fat Acceptance Movement In Germany.- 11. Reshaping "Turkish" Breasts And Noses: On Cosmetic Surgery, Normative Femininities, And Bodily Autonomy.- 12. Conversation On Rose: A Performative Installation.- 13. Body Beautiful: Comparative Meanings Of Beauty In South Africa, Brazil And Jamaica.- 14. "In This Country, Beauty Is Defined By Fairness Of Skin." On Skin Color Politics, Beauty Practices And Social Stratification In India.- 15. De-Centering Caucasian Whiteness.- 16. Skin Color Politics and the White Beauty Standard / A Conversation.