Beauty Regimes: A History of Power and Modern Empire in the Philippines, 1898-1941

In Beauty Regimes Genevieve Alva Clutario traces how beauty and fashion in the Philippines shaped the intertwined projects of imperial expansion and modern nation building during the turbulent transition between Spanish, US, and Japanese empires. Clutario takes readers through vivid scenes of beauty's collision with empire: from sartorial confrontations between white women and Filipinas about beauty and power, the spectacular Manila Carnival Queen pageants, and the global industry of Philippine embroidery and lingerie to Manila's high fashion designers and the exploitation of unfree labor in colonial prisons and schools. Drawing on English, Spanish, and Tagalog archival sources, Clutario demonstrates the way beauty shaped political debates among colonial administrators and nationalists and defined the everyday lifeworlds of working-class women, fashion designers, and elite Filipinas. Beauty operated as both regimen and regime in the Philippines, where empire became a thing of beauty. By demonstrating how beauty and fashion powerfully determined individual and cultural practices as well as national and transnational politics, Clutario offers new ways of understanding the centrality of beauty in the making of imperial and nationalist power.

Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award Recipient

A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University