Beauty as Subordinate Capital

Abstract This chapter examines beauty as a form of subordinated capital. Beauty can function as capital, but the returns beauty provides to beautiful women are limited and carry liabilities. Using beauty as the focus, and drawing on historical, legal, and sociological studies of fashion modeling, beauty contests, and service work, this chapter asks how gender, as it intersects with race and class, limits or augments the advantages that flow from corporeal capital. It finds that beauty is a form of capital with limited convertibility and suggests three sources of its devaluation: (1) the subordinate position of beauties within gendered hierarchies, (2) the linkage of beauty and sex, and (3) alienation of the profits of beauty. Each of these arises from beauty’s status as feminized corporeal capital. Further research can ask similar questions regarding how gender and race affect the convertibility of other forms of corporeal capital.