Current fellows

2024-2025 Humanities Center Doctoral Dissertation Fellow

Kearabetswe Mokoene, Doctoral Candidate, Philosophy

Dissertation Advisor: Simone Chess

Title: Conceptualizing black beauty: What does class have to do with it?

Abstract: In contemporary society, the social construction of beauty standards and norms significantly influences black women’s daily lived experiences and socialization processes, thereby affecting the meanings they attach to beauty and how they enact it. This study investigates how black women in the metro-Detroit region conceptualize, enact, and/or resist whitestream beauty norms at the intersections of race, gender, and class. It also explores their beauty socialization processes and how they, in turn, beauty socialize their own children, emphasizing the role of familial socialization on black women’s conceptualizations and everyday negotiations of beauty. Using an intersectional lens and semi-structured interviews with 50 middle and working-class black women from the metro Detroit area, this research aims to understand how black women conceptualize, attach meaning to, enact, and/or resist whitestream societal beauty norms across social class, and how familial socialization impacts their beauty conceptualizations, applications, and implications. Three themes emerged from the analysis. Firstly, both working and middle-class black women conceptualize beauty differently from the meanings they attach to beauty. The women in the metro Detroit area believe that beauty is an attitude and spirit rather than appearance. However, the actual expressions/ meanings they attach to beauty are largely shaped by socialized practices, lived experiences, and their perceived ideas about societal perceptions of black beauty. Black women in Detroit are also influenced by "classed" beauty norms, which results in class differences in how they enact beauty. Secondly, Michelle Obama's impact as the First Lady of the United States on middle-class black women is significant. She was singled out as the embodiment of holistic beauty and her representation made these women feel seen for the first time, given societal perceptions of black women’s looks. Her FLOTUS role encouraged them to reconsider what it means to be a “beautiful black woman,” including the courage to resist whitestream beauty norms.