Bodies, beauty, and location: An introduction

Abstract

Warning: A quick glance at the title of this book may lead to a dizzying constellation of questions. When talking about beauty, which manages to be simultaneously abstract and ephemeral, embodied and concrete, what do the dimensions of global, transnational, national, and local mean? Since these very geographic terms and categories are contested, what can we really learn about beauty by using them? What’s new about our approach in this volume? Is the globalization of beauty and body practices simply a diffusion of Western ideals, as is commonly believed, or do individuals and societies negotiate and resist Western norms? How does the interaction of local and global ideas about bodies produce particular forms of embodiment? To address these questions, this innovative volume debuts original research and personal reflections on: media depictions of Nordic metrosexual athletes; prostitutes working at the US/ Mexico border; beauty ideals among Somali migrants to Kenya; and the popularity of nose jobs among Iranian women, among other timely and understudied topics.