Beyond the Mulatta: Baianas as Theorists of Defiant Black Beauty

• In Event: Refusing the Nation, Theorizing Black Belonging - Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean, pt. 2

Description for Program

Mixed-race bodies and people, specifically those whose features approximate youthfulness and whiteness, have been ascribed as the dominant or ideal standard of Brazilian beauty by mainstream, official, and popular discourse. Based on twenty-two months of ethnographic research, including informal conversations and semi-structured interviews, this article underscores the fractures of this paradigm by amplifying the voices and perspectives of an older group of Afro-Brazilian women street vendors and cultural icons who have long transgressed the dominant logics of Brazilian beauty. By living, affirming, and reclaiming their beauty as middle-aged Black women who often present themselves in a de-sexualized manner, they defy the insidious, exclusionary, and racist ways that society has naturalized who does and who does not have access to beauty. In fact, this group of women, who are known as baianas, base their beauty in traits long rejected as desirable. Instead, they are practicing a defiant Black beauty. By learning from the baianas, we expand our understanding of politics and of beauty, underscoring how intimate acts of refusal, which reframe beauty as a life-long way of being that is rooted in blackness, challenge national projects and power dynamics based in white supremacy logics.

Author

• Vanessa Castaneda, Davidson College