Beautyvism: Beauty as a Political Tool

Abstract This chapter looks at the way social movements engage with beauty as a political tool and aim. We therefore propose the term beautyvism, a portmanteau of beauty and activism, to describe how social movement activists target and rely on beauty in historical and contemporary political struggles over social justice and equality. Using conceptual tools of social movement theory, we look at three cases of beautyvist movements to develop a typology of beautyvism: the anti-Miss America protests (1968), the Fat Acceptance movement (1968 and 2000s), and the Tradwives movement (2016-now). Based on our typology, we argue that beautyvist movements are serving a variety of (anti-)feminist ideological projects, sometimes emancipatory, sometimes revolutionary, and sometimes even reactionary. In conclusion, we make the case for more research that investigates the links between class, race, and the power of social media platforms as the most dominant arena of beautyvism in which the beauty regime is both resisted and challenged.