‘A woman isn’t a woman when she’s not concerned about the way she looks’: Beauty labour and femininity in post-soviet Russia

Abstract

This chapter explores change and continuity in gender and beauty discourses in Russia since the collapse of state socialism, drawing on in-depth interviews with readers of women’s magazines. It demonstrates how some Western-origin gender/feminist critique (for example, bodily disciplinarity) is applicable in a post-socialist context, but also considers the intersection of gender with context-specific discourses (for example, national identity). Participants framed an increased socio-cultural emphasis on building a ‘feminine’ appearance (‘beauty labour’) in various ways: whether negatively in terms of a perceived rise in individualistic or man-pleasing values in the post-Soviet era, or positively in terms of social progress. However, they also discussed the phenomenon as historical continuity or a specific attribute of (both Soviet and post-Soviet) Russian women.