Imagining Beauty Differently: Beyond Superficiality and Subjugation

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

Beautification practices are often portrayed as superficial and symbolic of women’s oppression. This panel considers the work of beauty in processes of imagining, fashioning, and negotiating positively valued selves. Miller explores how contemporary Japanese beauty norms dominate our interpretations and representations of historical figures. Reddy questions how beauty is used as a tool of “optimization” with unattainable “optimism” in Indian skin lightening discourses. Kang describes how young tomboys in Thailand use Korean and Japanese popular culture to elevate their status and participate in a modern cosmopolitan “Asia.” Elfving-Hwang addresses how older Korean women reconcile their bodies and youthful ideals through narratives of positive aging. Lee queries what US and Korean national feminist projects against plastic surgery and social media campaigns reveal about their underlying political investments. In sum, the panel examines cases from India to Japan and from youth to seniors to advance scholarship that focuses on the meanings of beauty practices that both challenge and reinforce the subjugation of women to patriarchal capitalist ideologies.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing-Diaspora

Session Organizer

• Dredge Byung'chu Kang, Washington University

Chair

• Dredge Byung'chu Kang, Washington University

Individual Presentations

• Historically Hot: Reimagining Beauty from Japan’s Past - Laura Miller, University of Missouri-St. Louis

• Beauty, Biopolitics, and (Cruel) Optimism: (Re)Assembling Beauty’s Neoliberal Attachments in Global India - Vanita Reddy, Texas A&M University

• “We look the same as Koreans:” Hallyu Imaginaries and Identification with Korean Soft Masculinity among Tomboys in Thailand - Dredge Byung'chu Kang, Washington University

• Aspirational Beauty Aesthetics in the Later Years in South Korea - Joanna Elfving-Hwang, The University of Western Australia

• Beauty between Empires: Global Feminism, Plastic Surgery and the Power of Social Media - Sharon Heijin Lee, New York University