Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Although the discussion of sexuality has become much more common in the public sphere and in the academy in recent years, for many people questions of sexual desire and sexual aesthetics are still naturalized and privatized. Despite the fairly widespread dissemination of arguments about sexual domination, the "beauty myth" that women face, and even the commodification of sexuality, it remains difficult to challenge the power of common sense ideas that matters of appearance are basically matters of personal taste, or that the various powers we attribute to sexuality and beauty are natural and inevitable.
In this paper, I want to contribute to the recent attempts to develop theoretical angles on what Lynn Chancer has called, only somewhat ironically, looksism (1998: 83). (See also Atkins 1998) Chancer sees attractiveness as a form of social distinction that interacts with other forms of stratification and power, but is a somewhat autonomous structure. I propose the concept of sexual capital to help us think about the power of appearance.