I consumi di bellezza tra normalizzazione e marginalità

The author has examined the results of two qualitative researches carried out in two marginal contexts: poverty and jail. The body and self-care issues, although aren’t the main focus of the surveys, have emerged strongly, revealing a collective imagination with standardized aesthetic and stabilise power. Thinness, youth, dress fashionably, the clever use of make up and beauty treatments are the most coveted consumer consumption and, at the same time, in conflict with the economical and existential difficulties of almost all interviewed. However, they are also perceived as important skills for social inclusion, in contrast to the “normal free world” where are used as tools of distinction and differentiation. The women interviewed do not want to be more beautiful than other women but they want to be beautiful just like the others for achieving a normality, very often denied by their difficult living conditions.