Considers the role of beauty in Costa Rican sex work. While Costa Rica's national mythology has long focused on claims to white origins, sex tourists identify local women's ‘exoticism’ and non-whiteness as particularly appealing. Explores how women experience and manage their sexual attractiveness to foreign tourists in their daily lives and work.
Discusses feminist theorizing of beauty and its intersection with the notion of race in Latin America and the Caribbean including Mexico, Brazil and Colombia.
