2. Questions:
• Are personal appearance and beauty a kind of symbolic
capital? Where do we see examples of this in both the
articles?
• What is the relationship between racial/ethnic histories and
standards of attractiveness? Do these play out differently in
India and Brazil?
• What is the relationship between bodily transformations
(such as lighter skin, plastic surgery) and ideas of self-esteem,
self-worth, and personal empowerment?
• Do “the poor have the right to be beautiful’? What is the
connection between access to plastic surgery, self-esteem,
and egalitarianism in Brazil?
• What do it mean that we are critiquing of these practices
from a privileged Western perspective?
