Imposição da magreza como ideal de beleza na era da do capitalismo transestético : a violação do direito fundamental das mulheres à igualdade

Abstract

In the context in which power produces knowledge and positive effects at the level of desire for the perfection of the body, this research aims to understand to what extent patriarchal asymmetries of power, analyzed through Michel Foucault's analytical categories, violate the fundamental right to equality and non-discrimination of women through the consolidation of skinniness as an ideal of beauty in the era of Western trans-aesthetic capitalism. Although both men and women are currently pursuing the ideal of a skinny body, the hypothesis of this research incorporates the suspicion that the imposition of the aesthetic standard of skinniness, due to it’s transversely with patriarchy, capitalism and the beauty myth, affects woman more severely. This research is based on the existence of the sex/gender system, coined by Rubin, to understand the asymmetric relations of power exercised by men over women in patriarchal society. As presented, the feminist movement resistances achieved the construction of feminist theories and the recognition of equality as a fundamental right of women. The categories discipline, biopolitics and governmentality, from the perspective of Michel Foucault, are indispensable for understanding the imposition of skinniness as a phenomenon initiated in modernity. Equally important, the philosophy of Gilles Lipovetsky is adopted for the understanding of its update to the hypermodernity. The male domination strategy connecting being a woman to the beauty category, meaning skinniness, is taken, as understood by Naomi Wolf, as the most significant form of resistance to the advances achieved by feminist movements. Intensified by the presence of trans-aesthetic capitalism, a model of capital accumulation based on the aesthetic ethics of life transformation, the imposition of the aesthetic standard of skinniness on women is revealed as a double violation of its fundamental right to equality. At the end of the research, a clipping of digital marketing strategies by Forever 21 in the Instagram social network exemplifies hyper-modern neoliberal biopolitical strategies. The historical-dialectical materialism by Karl Marx is adopted as the methodology for this work. The investigation points to the understanding that the social imposition of skinniness as a beauty ideal to women is incompatible with the construction of a society oriented by dignity of the human being and fundamental rights and guarantees.