Abstract
France has long been the standard source of inspiration for traditional criteria of elegance and beauty for the whole world. In this article, a French anthropologist looks at China’s recent emergence in this field. In 1980, the cosmetics market was non-existent in China; in 2019, it became the world’s largest market. Beauty (care of the body, skin, face, hair, neck, hands, and nails) has been used as a marker for changes in that society for fifty years. Conceptions of beauty are used to analyze the variation of aesthetic standards, the place of the collective in relation to the individual, the position of women in Chinese society, the importance of practices marking social class distinction or evolving tensions between generations. The beauty market is both the result of lifestyle changes (especially the rise of divorce, new social stratification, intercultural mixing, life transformations cycle stages) and the establishment of a double logistics system. Public logistics allow the supply and marketing of cosmetics in shopping centers. Private logistics, those of bathrooms and the arrival of running water and electricity in urban housing, make it possible for Chinese women to use makeup and body products. This analysis shows that although beauty has an individual and intimate dimension, it also has a strong political and collective dimension. Beauty combines conformity with transgression.
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