CULT 320:Globalization and Culture

Kara Heitz, 11/13/2014

Questions:• Are personal appearance and beauty a kind of symbolic

capital? Where do we see examples of this in both the articles?• What is the relationship between racial/ethnic histories and

standards of attractiveness? Do these play out differently in India and Brazil?

• What is the relationship between bodily transformations (such as lighter skin, plastic surgery) and ideas of self-esteem, self-worth, and personal empowerment?

• Do “the poor have the right to be beautiful’? What is the connection between access to plastic surgery, self-esteem, and egalitarianism in Brazil?

• What do it mean that we are critiquing of these practices from a privileged Western perspective?