The Rhetorical Power of Appearance: An Archival Study of Beauty Ideals

Abstract

In her dissertation, “The Rhetorical Power of Appearance: An Archival Study of Beauty Ideals,”Alexis Sabryn Walston draws from embodied rhetorics and feminist theory to analyze how race, gender, and sexuality impact constructions of beauty ideals and, in turn, women’s rhetorical styling choices. She considers how rhetors craft, maintain, resist, circulate, and queer beauty ideals in three case studies: UMD etiquette books, To Do Or Not To Do, from 1937 and 1940; 1950s bleaching cream advertisements and related beauty articles in Ebony magazine; and transgender beauty guru NikkieTutorials’s YouTube channel. In all three case studies, Walston determines that women are provided embodied rhetorical instruction in how to dress and style themselves in ways that afford them social status–including men’s romantic attention and women’s admiration. Walston’s analysis ultimately argues that dominant beauty ideals are a form of epideictic rhetoric that prioritize femininity, whiteness, and heteronormativity; further, conforming to or resisting beauty ideals by styling oneself in a particular way allows rhetors to assert their embodied identity and craft their selected ethos.