Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty - Current Issue

Within current discourse around beauty standards and body politics, the concept of ‘body neutrality’ has been offered an alternative to the concept of ‘body positivity’. Rather than heavy emphasis on the ‘self-love’ of one’s body, or loving one’s perceived ‘flaws’ or features, body neutrality suggests we think of our bodies as vessels that allow us to do work in the world. The concept of body neutrality moves beyond thinking of bodies as things to be looked at, appraised or ‘loved’. Black women’s relationship to concepts of beauty and body politics has always been complex and contentious. The bodies of Black women and femmes have historically been marginalized, othered and/or erased. In this article, I ask: what about Black women’s relationship to the concept of body neutrality? What are the stakes of Black women taking on a body neutral stance? Through a Black feminist framework, I explore the utility of ‘body neutrality’. I argue that while body neutrality may offer a useful way for individual people to heal body negative sentiments, a more structural, subversive critique is needed for the liberation of Black women and all oppressed peoples. I maintain that it is difficult for Black women to lay claim to body neutrality. Bodies should not matter, but Black women’s bodies are always seen in political and socio-historical contexts. Ultimately, in exploring the contours and limits of the concept of body neutrality as mapped onto Black women’s bodies, I contribute to transdisciplinary conversations around race, gender, body politics and beauty.

This article provides a feminist critical discourse analysis (CDA) of ‘Women in Islam’ editorials in the Nation of Islam’s (NOI) journal, Muhammad Speaks, from 1961 to 1975, to explore the ways in which women in the NOI constructed Black beauty. I argue that the NOI provided Black women with a new definition of Black beauty that challenged the dominant controlling images of Black womanhood that marked them as ugly, unfeminine and hypersexual. Through the organization’s emphasis on disciplining women’s bodies through modesty, naturalness and cleanliness, I show how the NOI created a new racial hierarchy and standard of beauty that valorized some Black women, while contributing to the marginalization of other Black women. The article reveals the limitations of solely relying on beauty politics to provide liberation for all Black women.

The Queen Moremi Ajasoro (QMA) cultural and leadership pageant is rooted in Yorùbá consciousness and cultural heritage. The QMA introduces contestants to Yorùbá histories, myths and cultural values, emphasizing a holistic conception of both Iwa (‘moral character’) and Ewa (‘beauty’). The pageant provides a space not only for the interpretation of Yorùbá knowledge systems but also for cultural empowerment and preservation. This article explores how the QMA pageant offers a way to negotiate and challenge colonial-based, social hierarchies in the conception of beauty in the contemporary Nigerian state. At the same time, the pageant also reinforces some European beauty standards. We examine the dynamics and interplay of western cultural domination, Nigerian multiethnic state politics and traditional culture through the making of a Yorùbá Queen.

This study explores how six self-identified Black women at a large post-secondary institution in the United States use dress as a tool of race-making that eschews negative tropes of Black femininity. In a world where racialized discourse exerts pressure to conform to a veneration of whiteness, these women deliberately curate their attire to embody what I term ‘Aesthetic Blackness’ – a celebration of Black beauty, style and femininity that defies the hegemonic stereotypes of Blackness. Their clothing choices do more than just resist negative images like the hypersexualized jezebel; they construct a vision of Black femininity that is distinct, powerful and consciously separate from whiteness. This intentional expression of Blackness through dress is not only an act of self-affirmation but also a complex participation in the racialization of their bodies. By embedding racialized notions of femininity into their everyday attire, these women contribute to the ongoing development and preservation of their racial identity and subjectivity. Yet this practice also complicates constructions of race, as it inadvertently reinforces the notion that race is a natural, embodied feature, rather than a construct rooted in inequality and oppression. This duality – dress as both a mode of resistance and a potential reification of racial myths – invites us to add nuance to the ways in which race and identity are performed and perpetuated.