“If I’ve got myself a cute little new nose, it’s because I deserve it”: The life of beauty through rhinoplasty of the negroid nose in Brazil

The likelihood of many Brazilian women of African ancestry realising their hopes and dreams seemed greater from the early 2000s onwards in the wake of exponential economic growth, a development that saw the emergence of a new middle class, one which was more racially diverse than the traditional white bourgeoisie. The subsequent increase in overall levels of consumption saw the number of rhinoplasty surgeries grow substantially as women from Brazil’s new middle class tried to reach their beauty goals, thus achieving “normality” while improving their self esteem and overcoming structural racial inequalities by achieving beauty, something considered a right in Brazilian culture.
The rigidity of Brazilian standards of beauty in relation to the nose means that rhinoplasty surgeries typically adhere to dominant beauty ideals, which exclude women from black and non-white backgrounds despite 50% of the Brazilian population declaring itself to be non-white. The root of these beauty ideals is linked to white privilege and black inferiority established since colonialism and subsequent uneven development, leaving black women at the bottom of society. Recalling racial hierarchies of beauty, in medical practice rhinoplasty surgery is delineated according to phenotype and, as such, there is an implicit grading of nose type, in that a Caucasian nose is considered the most beautiful and desirable whereas the negroid nose is undesirable and needs to be changed.
This chapter explores how the hopes and desires of women with a negroid nose are linked to notions of beauty while examining this site of consumption and the struggle between their increased economic power and the prevailing structural hierarchies of race, class and gender, thereby contributing to debates on hierarchies of power through the lens of beauty (Edmonds 2010; Jarrín 2017; Craig 2002; Caldwell 2007). I place the lived experiences of the women at the centre of this research, as they strive to express agency and autonomy in their quest for beauty capital.