Glamorous citizens: young women, state parades and the affective politics of belonging in Yaoundé, Cameroon

Abstract

ABSTRACT Focusing on young Bamileke women in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in this article I examine how they prepare and perform for the Women’s Day parade. I suggest that their preparations and performances are permeated by an aesthetic of glamour that is underpinned by affects of pleasure and joy. This aesthetics was incorporated into state parades at the independence of the Cameroonian state. Thus, when affects are evoked in young women’s performances on Women’s Day, the young women make Cameroon look good. I argue that, for young women, the everyday aesthetic acts involved in crafting an aesthetics of glamour in preparing for and performing at the parade become affective ways of self-constitution as Cameroonian citizens. Young women who are invited to participate and conjure up glamour can also claim certain benefits associated with the state, thereby revealing glamour as a gendered aspect of the affective politics of belonging in Cameroon.