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Access Type
WSU Access
Date of Award
January 2025
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
Sociology
First Advisor
Michelle Jacobs
Abstract
This research examines how familial beauty socialization informs black women’s conceptualizations, enactments, resistance, and rearticulations of the socially constructed mainstream beauty ideals. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with forty black women (ages 18- 80) from the metro Detroit, MI area. Using grounded theory, the study found that the primary beauty socializing agents, mothers and grandmothers, have intergenerational influence and convey racialized beauty socialization practices to their daughters and granddaughters. As primary beauty socializing agents have both: experienced oppression due to their minoritized status and developed racial pride due to their engagement with ideas i.e., Black is Beautiful that prospered during the 1950s–1970s. The racialized beauty socialization messaging is contradictory from the dominant (Eurocentric) beauty culture. Also, as part of young black women’s beauty conceptualizations beauty, Michelle Obama emerged as the holistic beauty embodiment figure. Her historic role as the first African American First Lady made these women felt seen, represented, and validated in their own identities, importantly their physical appearance. For them, Obama is a beauty role model due to her conduct while in the White House, marked by grace and poise, thus providing necessary counter-narrative to the pervasive “angry black woman” stereotype. Lastly, Obama is a representation of beauty due to how she responded to criticism and bias related to her appearance. Thus, showcasing her resilience and defiance of conventional beauty standards.
Recommended Citation
Mokoene, Kearabetswe Ziphora, "Conceptualizing Black Beauty And Understanding The Effects Of Beauty Socialization" (2025). Wayne State University Dissertations. 4262.
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/4262