Sexual Empowerment: How Erotic Capital Attracts Wealth And Power

I continue to encounter varied responses from people due to my self-presentation, from positive to negative, from ambivalent to punitive. I plan to write about this in the near future. Other women may feel different pressures in their negotiation of beauty ideals in other professional fields. This never fails to frustrate me. Yet it is possible to be feminist and to enjoy beauty and fashion trends and gain personal pleasure from these industries whilst also being critical of them.

Angie Dwyer has done some excellent work on this with regards to the knowledge young girls gain from fashion models. The Born This Way Blog shows yet another set of eclectic gender and sexual expressions by LGBT adults reflecting on photographs from their early childhoods. This blog addresses the personal development of sexual desire, identity and beauty through gender-non-conformity. These examples show that the negotiation of beauty, gender and sexual practices are complex.

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Clearly, there is a lot of social pressure on people to confirm to particular sexual and beauty ideals. Applied sociologists would ask: What are the social consequences of erotic capital and beauty ideals for different groups? How do we use this information to contribute to social change? Studies that fail to deconstruct the social, cultural and material constraints on the lived experiences of sexuality and beauty reproduce the existing social order.

The potential of social science is not fulfilled. Peter Berger argued that part of the reason why sociology struggles to find legitimacy as a science is because we deal with topics that are familiar to most people — so why would they need our sociological interpretation? Our duty as sociologists, Berger argued, is to take apart the familiar and to offer new ways to challenge taken-for-granted social norms.

On a similar vein, C. Wright Mills argued that the sociological imagination helps us see the relationship between history and biography. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Sexual properties are as inseparable from class properties as the yellowness of lemons is inseparable from its acidity: Sociology of Sexual Capital Sociological research has shown that social, cultural, racial, class and other social hierarchies affect the sexual agency of different sub-groups.

Subjective Experiences of Beauty Ideals For some people, there is also a lot of pleasure in performing gendered beauty practices. The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its task and its promise. To recognize this task and this promise is the mark of the classic social analyst. Sexism and Racism in Film: By Dr Zuleyka Zevallos.

Africa: 'Erotic Capital' - a New Way for Uganda to Get Economic Growth?

Please follow my commenting policy Cancel reply Enter your comment here Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment: The Power Of Erotic Capital, which argued women should capitalise on their erotic side to get on in life. Iain Law, senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Birmingham, thinks that using looks is not always wrong in itself. A poster from 75 years ago, featuring a young woman flexing her arm muscle has become a worldwide icon of female strength, struggle and empowerment.

So why does this image keep coming back into popular culture? However, adds Dr Law, the rules are slightly different outside of show business, for example in an office environment. It's the unfairness of the result that matters. Maria do Mar Pereira, a feminist sociologist at the University of Warwick, sees the sexual element of this unfair deal as a key contextual issue.

Individually, there's nothing wrong, but individuals exist in society," Dr Pereira says.

Both academics agree that, in the case of high-profile women who work in the public arena, the professional use of a sexualised image might have a problematic impact on their audience, who may feel it is the only way to succeed. There is a word that frequently pops up in the debate on the extent to which people, and in particular women, should sexualise their image, if at all.

Erotic Capital and the Sociology of Beauty

This word is empowerment and is linked to the idea that sex is a weapon of liberation. Using it to your own advantage is not just a skill, but a way to assert an individual's right to self-determination. So scanty outfits, provocative behaviour or willingly joining the sex industry have been regarded by some as examples of the fight against exploitation and reclaiming the female body. Individual decisions, she says, operate on two levels: The other level is the social impact and repercussions of that individual decision.

Your empowerment cannot come at the expense of the empowerment of others. Dr Law explains that western liberal society believes in the individual right to self-determination and self-expression.

Africa: 'Erotic Capital' - a New Way for Uganda to Get Economic Growth? - www.newyorkethnicfood.com

Dr Law says whether or not these intuitions are right is a debate that inflames the ethics community. Others of us disagree with that. Dr Law adds, that in the case of pop music and culture promoting a sexualised image, there might be a clash between an artist's individual right to self-expression and the potentially damaging social effect of their art.

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While music is often cited as complicit in promoting sexualisation to a young audience, it has also helped shape the current moral landscape and redefine what is socially acceptable, in particular with regards to sex and women's freedom. Charlotte Church cited Madonna as a "template setter" who used her image to make a statement, someone in charge of her own sexuality. By changing her image regularly and putting her sexual self in the heart of her image, says Ms Church, Madonna was proving to be in control of herself and her sexuality.

So is this merely a matter of taste? How can an audience draw the line between positive and vulgar, degrading uses of sex?

Dr Pereira thinks the difference is not in the audience or the intention, but in whether the way sexuality is used by a particular artist is "opened up or closed down". Any kind of use of sex that promotes and encourages a sense of diversity and multiplicity is socially very powerful in a very positive sense," says Dr Pereira. On the other hand, she concludes, any use of sex that reinforces a more narrow understanding of sexuality - for example that the only way of being sexual is to be young and made up in a certain way - "tends to reinforce norms and expectations and ends up limiting our choices and our decision-making".

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