Document Type : -
Authors
1
Economic and Development Sociology– Iranian Social Issues Ph.D student, Faculty of Humanities, Ashtian Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ashtian, Iran.
2
Assistant Professor of Sociology Department, Faculty of Humanities, Ashtian Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ashtian, Iran. (advisor & corresponding author)
3
Professor of Sociology Department, Faculty of Humanities, Ashtian Branch, Islamic Azad university, Ashtian, Iran. (Advisor)
Abstract
Beauty discourse could be considered as a way for individuals and groups to talk about beauty as a system of codes and symbols used in referring to body. This system is formed through a historical process within a social-cultural context via the exercise of existing social powers. In the present study, an attempt has been made to explore the historical evolution of the phenomenon of beauty and its impacts on the individual and social life of Iranian women based on Laclau and Mouffe’s theory and method of discourse analysis. Accordingly, historical documents and data from the Iranian constitutional revolution period as a historical turning point, and also those of the periods before and after it, were analyzed to reveal the Iranian society’s transition, deepening and intensification of the concept of feminine beauty. The results of analysis show that under the influence of modernism on beauty values, appearance of discoursal and institutional restlessness in the Qajar period, and in the constitutional revolution period in particular, and following the interaction with Europe, the turning of the beauty discourse started. The deepening of the impacts of modernism in the Pahlavi period resulted in the relative domination of a new beauty discourse whose effects could be traced in the individual and social lives of women – in the limits of social visibility of women, consumption and life style of women, family structure, critique or acceptance of patriarchal dominance, body management, and relationships and interactions between the two sexes.
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