Research Projects

My dissertation draws from embodied rhetorics and feminist theory to analyze how race, gender, and sexuality impact rhetorical constructions of beauty and, in turn, women’s rhetorical styling choices. I consider how beauty ideals are a form of epideictic rhetoric that have been rhetorically crafted, circulated, resisted, and queered through their circulation. My first body chapter analyzes how the only two archived UMD etiquette books, “To Do Or Not To Do,” from 1937 and 1940 instruct women students on how to dress and style themselves for class, dates, and dances. My second chapter delves into the advertising and marketing boom of the 1950s, examining digitized issues of Ebony to consider how bleaching cream advertisements perpetuated white-centric beauty ideals, which is in direct contrast to Ebony’s beauty-related articles and exposés. Jumping forward to the twenty-first century, my third body chapter contends that NikkieTutorials, a transgender YouTube beauty guru, uses YouTube as an archive and a safe space to confront gendered beauty ideals in ways that express her embodied identity. Ultimately, I argue that beauty ideals are epideictic rhetoric that prioritize whiteness and heterosexuality; further, styling oneself in a particular way allows rhetors to assert their embodied identity, conform to or resist gender roles, and craft their selected ethos. Thus, my dissertation intervenes in scholarly conversations about embodiment and rhetorics of display (Prelli; Chun; Mckoy) to posit that beauty ideals and one’s outward appearance hold significant rhetorical weight.