Tranças, turbantes e empoderamento de mulheres negras: artefatos de moda como tecnologias de gênero e raça no evento Afro Chic (Curitiba-PR)

Abstract

This dissertation discusses the articulations between gender, race and material culture in the black women’s bodies construction who undergo the process of hair transition. The research is centered on the Afro Chic event, which happens in Curitiba and promotes affirmative actions related to curly hair and black women’s empowerment. I perceive this event as one of the strategies of the Tombamento Generation, a cultural movement that uses fashion and aesthetics as political tools for the deconstruction of race and gender stereotypes. By an analysis of the historical processes related to the bleaching ideology in Brazil, I try to understand the rejections and resistances of the black aesthetics in the country. In this event, I am interested mainly in the braids and headwraps workshops, which teaches these techniques and articulate their use in connection with the Afro-Brazilian culture, encouraging a look at diversity and for the body as a whole constructed by different elements, including material culture. The research is qualitative, with participatory observation in the second edition of the event, with a field journal and interviews with the facilitators of the workshops, based on the method of oral history and life history. By the theory of material culture and intersectionality studies, I understand braids and turbans as fashionable artifacts and try to understand how they participate in the process of empowering black women who undergo the hair transition. This artifact also construct and deconstruct gender and race in the bodies and, therefore, I argue that the use of braids and turbans in the process of capillary transition is one of the proposals of "unbleaching" of Brazilian aesthetic standards and racism’s resistance strategy.