Sea Antics: The Politics of Beauty and Transwomen in the Colombian Western Caribbean / Travesuras marinas: Mujeres trans y las políticas de la belleza en el Caribe occidental colombiano / Sii Antiks: Di Palitiks a Byuti an Chrans-uman iina di Kolombian Wes Karibyan

Abstract

Drawing on a longitudinal ethnography of beauty pageants, hair salons and cultural festivities, this thesis provides a sociological study of transwomen or maras’ involvement in beauty occupations to cope with social contempt. The research is based on in-depth studies during an 18-month fieldwork period from 2022 to 2023 in what was a British Puritan colony in the seventeenth century but was legally and politically incorporated into the Colombian state in the nineteenth century. Focusing on the Archipelago of San Andrés, Old Providence and Ketlina in the Western Caribbean, I argue that the use of beauty is political as a communitarian intervention by transwomen or maras on the islands to forge their life paths and collective claims to dignity. Through community work with the Miss Nancy Land Organisation for Afro-Caribbean Women and Young Islanders, I highlight the creative and strategic ways transwomen employ beauty in contradictory manners to assert themselves within the archipelago’s community bonds. The research links the fields of beauty and Caribbean studies from a gender and sexually dissident feminist perspective, addressing the socio-historical challenges faced by transwomen, including cisheteronormative violence, colonial legacies of respectability, multicultural institutionalisation and economic survival. The thesis comprises four standalone articles that examine, first, the negotiation of community belonging within the Black Creole Caribbean via a personalisation of religious Christian faith, friendships and family, beyond conservative Protestant understandings. Second, it explores how beauty care work is built through maras’s ageing trajectories by learning financial and emotional solvency skills to deal with abusive cismen partners and strengthening bonds with their mothers. Third, it shows the emergence of a personal assertion of maricada in beauty-related activities – i.e. individual affirmation within communitarian accountability – beyond the multicultural recognition of rights as outlined in the Colombian Constitution of 1991. Finally, it explains the politicised use of beauty-related fraudulent contracts for the personal distribution of public funds in a corruption scandal based on rudeness, akin to a telenovela (soap opera), aimed at destabilising social asymmetries. Overall, the thesis contributes to sociological scholarship on Caribbean studies by challenging assumptions that approach maras solely through the lens of gender identities and their use of beauty as superficial matters linked only to bodily appearance, vanity or consumerism. Instead, I highlight that the politics of beauty relate to maras’ involvement in beauty practices to intervene in community-building.