Biopower Of Beauty

In “The Biopower of Beauty: Humanitarian Imperialism and Global Feminism in an Age of Terror,” Mimi Thi Nguyen argues that beauty as a measure of moral character functions to regulate an individual. Nguyen explains that beauty promises to be redemptive and bring an individual from the outside in relation with the world(362). For example, the United States through nongoverenmental orgainizations (NGO’s), have promoted beauty to Afghanistan women because it is a way if liberating them from an uncivilized barbaric society that oppresses them to hide their beauty through the veil. According to Kant, the veil is considered ugly because it hides the body, which is associated with the erotic. Kant claims that beauty made visible is true and good,

Nguyen asserts that individuals use beauty as a serious of techniques to produce knowledge and emotions that function to portray the individual with dignity in comparison to the “ugly”. Thus, the use of beauty as an educational tool that measures their character is an important factor in teaching women to associate themselves with the rest of the world. Nguyen states the programs that NGO’s provide for women who do not have the knowledge to make themselves beautiful, serve as programs of empowerment that are connected to forms of dominance (360). Nguyen claims through beauty, Afghanistan women are suppose to feel a sense of self-worth and agency that was denied to them, while adhering to a set of western ideals of beauty. Nguyen

In the article, Nguyen states that one NGO called, Beauty without Borders, opened the Kabul Beauty School in 2003. The Kabul Beauty school is run by the North American and European fashion industry and non profit professionals within the context of war. Nguyen states that according to U.S benefactors, the Afghan cosmeticians at the salon “look after the welfare of the beautiful and the good suppressed by the Taliban” that operates within the ugliness of war (360). Nguyen claims that such thinking justifies the beauty salon’s presence as a refugee of the good and moral for Afghanistan women within the evil and ugliness of the Taliban. Nguyen argues that this is rooted in discourses of “civilizational thinking”, which is defined by Minoo Moallem, as being a divide between the “civility of the ‘west’ from the barbarism of the ‘Rest’ (366-367).” Nguyen claims that through civilization thinking the western based salon is “civilized” compared to the rest of the country in which these women live in. Nguyen contends that this has led the “experts” of beauty to draw comparisons about their culture and the west in relation to their beauty skills. For example, Nguyen uses one hairstylist comment that states, “They don’t have any technique whatsoever....Do you think that they would have their hair