In Brazil Certain Male Prostitutes Dress Like Women
journal article
Sociologus
, pp. 73-96 (24 pages)
Published By: Duncker & Humblot GmbH
https://www. jstor .org/stable/24755106
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Drawing on my fieldwork experience with Brazilian travesti1 sex workers in Rio de Janeiro, I argue that travestis' desire for beauty both structures their daily experiences and empowers them. Travestis have to engage with a complicated, dangerous and expensive career in order to construct their identities. The attainment of a beautiful body is at the heart of their interest. Travestis seek a sense of 'perfection', that is, they strive to be like women, but beautiful and desirable ones. Their aim is to create bodies that can achieve feminine and glamorous shapes. Every bodily improvement reinforces their self-identity and status within the group. Although their lives can be very hard – it is difficult to be a travesti in Brazilian society, which is rather intolerant of sexual and gender diversity – it is through the processes they engage in to produce beautiful and feminine bodies that travestis give meaning to their existence and find a place for themselves in their communities and in the world, despite that place being uncertain and marginalised. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the article focuses on the embodied experiences of a group of Brazilian travestis. Instead of considering travestis' beauty as a mere imitation of normative femininity, my goal is to redefine beauty in relation to its capacity to create identities and subjects who feel empowered and desired. Finally, travestis' creation of agency through beauty is analysed against the background of heteronormativity and ongoing transphobic violence in Brazil.
Sociologus is an internationally known, peer-reviewed journal of social anthropology. It is available online and in print and is listed in the major scholarly indexes. Founded in 1925 by Richard Thurnwald, it is one of the best-known anthropology journals in the German-speaking world. The journal is dedicated to empirical research on cultural diversity, social processes and their transformations and the contrasting forms of social relations. It has no fixed topical or regional focus, but concerns itself with the comparative interpretation and explanation of human behaviour. Its international status is underlined by the use of English as a second language of publication and the fact that more than half of the subscriptions are held by overseas institutions. Today, Sociologus aims at providing European, especially German-speaking, social anthropologists with the opportunity to contribute to international discussion and research through a publication that meets the highest international standards.
The publisher Duncker and Humblot currently publishes more than 250 scientific monographs and anthologies each year in more than 150 series as well as 20 scientific journals and yearbooks. The program comprises more than 15,000 available titles in the fields of law and economics, economics and social sciences, history, political science, literature, philosophy. Im Verlag Duncker and Humblot erscheinen derzeit jährlich über 250 wissenschaftliche Monographien bzw. Sammelbände in mehr als 150 Schriftenreihen sowie 20 wissenschaftliche Zeitschriften und Jahrbücher. Das Programm umfaßt mehr als 15.000 lieferbare Titel zu den Fachgebieten: Rechts- und Staatswissenschaften, Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Geschichte, Politikwissenschaft, Literaturwissenschaft, Philosophie.
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Sociologus © 2016 Duncker & Humblot GmbH
Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24755106
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