Beauty is constantly lived and incorporated as a meaningful social category in Brazil and intersects with racialised and gendered ways of belonging to the Brazilian nation. Article shows how middle-class women self-identifying as black embody and experience beauty and how, through practices and discourses centered on physical appearance, they both reinforce and challenge broader social and racial inequalities in Brazil.
Investigates the interface between gender, color/race and public health in Brazil, focusing on the importance of reproductive health for the formation of a black feminism in the country, between the years 1975 to 1993.
Departamento de Epidemiologia da Faculdade de Saúde, Pública da Universidade de São Paulo
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
175 p, The study sought to compare vulnerability to recurrent infections and illness among women living with HIV/AIDS. The study group was composed of 1068 volunteers, over 18 years of age (526 non-Black and 542 Black women) being attended by three public services, which are references for the treatment of STD/AIDS within the State of Sao Paulo during the period between September 1999 and February 2000.
Using Black women's responses to same-race sexual assault, demonstrates how scholars can use interpersonal violence to understand social processes and develop conceptual models. African and Caribbean immigrants often avoid the language of social structure in their rape accounts and use cultural references to distance themselves from African Americans.
Investigates the associations between reproductive and menstrual risk factors for breast cancer and mammographic density, a strong risk factor for breast cancer, in a predominantly ethnic minority and immigrant sample. Interviewed women (42% African American, 22% African Caribbean, 22% White, 9% Hispanic Caribbean, 5% other) without a history of breast cancer during their mammography appointment (n = 191, mean age = 50). Concludes that the mean level of mammographic density did not differ across ethnic and nativity groups, but several risk factors for breast cancer were associated with density in ethnic minority and immigrant women.
