“This is real beauty”: Pushing the Boundaries of Aesthetic Citizenship Online

Despite recent efforts toward inclusion within the legacy media circuit, body diversity remains incredibly uncommon. This is partly a function of industry conventions that standardize appearance to mitigate against risk inherent in cultural production. In contrast, social media are described as “democratizing” beauty and promoting diversity. But these media platforms still play a role in constraining boundaries around aesthetic citizenship—a status conferred based on appearance. We use aesthetic citizenship to inform an analysis of 300 online images and advertisements posted by three beauty retailers: Benefit, Sephora, and Dove. We find that representations of disability remain rare even while other kinds of representation along the lines of race, for example, are on the rise. We also note that people who embody multiple dimensions of difference are among the most likely to be excluded from images and advertisements of beauty online. Beauty is connected to boundary work and these findings highlight the relationship between everyday representations of beauty and the reproduction of inequality.