GWS 355

Credit: 3 hours.

Examines beauty cultures and the promise of transformation embedded in the makeover by analyzing how tropes, ideologies and mythologies bolster the construction of human, gendered, sexed, and racialized identities. Technological innovations have become central to beauty, and we will examine the intended and unintended consequences of their use, and what it means to rely upon such devices. Looks at the ways in which beauty is constructed, naturalized, reproduced, privileged, and contested through various venues such as media, history, and popular culture. Attention will be given to race, class, gender, sexuality, and the implications thereof.