Article

Feminist Theory
14(2) 171–185
‘Decent girls with good ! The Author(s) 2013
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hair’: Beauty, morality and sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1464700113483243
race in Venezuela fty.sagepub.com

Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols

Drury University, USA

Abstract
This article describes the use of idealised women’s bodies as avatars of national identity
and morality in early twentieth century Venezuela, as evidenced in works of classic
literature from the period 1929–1949. Referencing two of Venezuela’s most prominent
authors, Teresa de la Parra and Antonia Palacios, the article describes how young girls in
Venezuela in the first half of the twentieth century were enculturated to pursue ‘white’
ideals of beauty perceived as morally superior. Using the examples of Parra’s semi-
autobiographical novel Memorias de Mamá Blanca and Palacios’ similarly autobiographical
Ana Isabel, una niña decente, this study investigates the topic of identity formation and
the state, especially in regards to the control of women’s sexuality and women’s bodies
in state ideologies, while exploring the specific racial overtones of beauty practices and
education.

Keywords
Beauty, hair, Palacios, Parra, race, Venezuela

‘La negritud venezolana no es bella’ [Black women in Venezuela are not beautiful].
(Osmel Sousa, Director of Miss Venezuela in a 2002 interview)1

In Susan Bordo’s influential work on the body, she notes that ‘our bodies are
necessarily cultural forms; whatever roles anatomy and biology play, they always
interact with culture’ (1993: 16). One of these interactions in Latin America
has been the control of women’s bodies in the construction of national identity.
As a review of the literature shows (Anderson, 1983; Sommer, 1991; Wright, 1995),

Corresponding author:
Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols, Department of Languages, Drury University, 900 North Benton Avenue,
Springfield, MO 65802, USA.
Email: enichols@drury.edu
172 Feminist Theory 14(2)

in Latin America the social conventions governing pair-bonding and reproduction

have codified existing hierarchies of race and class while allowing elites to embark
upon a project of moral advancement for the good of the nation. In her work on
the Venezuelan novel, for example, Julie Skurski argues that this process was seen
as a chance to reclaim an ‘authentic’ Venezuelan past that rejected Spanish identity
while creating a specific modern, creole self. This vision for the Venezuelan state
sought a new sense of nationality that refused to embrace the indigenous or inte-
grate other marginalised groups (Skurski, 1994). In order to achieve the goals of
the project, society was responsible for maintaining the purity of European blood-
lines through control of women’s bodies.
This process of creating a national identity through careful breeding is not
limited to the Venezuelan case. In many Latin American nations, this ideology
led to the use of images of female beauty to create a vision of national morality
that conflated the perfect female image with the values of the nation (Lobato,
2005: 1). Women who embodied the desired traits of the state could be seen as a
‘sign of modernity’2 (Lobato, 2005: 11), and the processes designed to seek out and
reward women who embodied the physical features valued by the state were viewed
as key components in building a ‘nosotros nacional’ or ‘national we’ (Bolivar, 2007:
75). These women who represented an aspirational national identity through their
appearance stood in for the moral value of the whole, with the use of their ‘physical
features as a verification of a supposed innate moral value’ (Bolivar, 2007: 77).
A woman who was careful to manage and control her body could be trusted to find
a mate with appropriately ‘white’ features, and have ‘whiter’ children.
In Venezuela, as in other nations, this construction of a national identity has
been complicated by an unwillingness to confront socially entrenched disparities of
race. Ingrid Bolivar notes that the process of identity construction in Colombia was
limited to wealthy families who demonstrated ‘honour, respectability, antiquity’
(Bolivar, 2007: 75). These concepts of honour and respectability, not to mention
wealth, are intrinsically tied to race in both nations. While the ideology of national
authenticity in Venezuela might have theoretically sought a specifically American
mestizaje,3 this process in effect concealed and recreated the hierarchies of the
colonial legacy. Indeed, as Skurski notes, the idea of racial mixing was understood
as ‘part of an evolutionary movement toward ‘‘white’’, understood as modern,
culture’ (1994: 629).
By engaging in a historical study of concepts of physical beauty for women in
Venezuela, scholars can learn much more about the role of women in the creation
of national identity in Latin American nations. Beauty practices and work, learned
and understood by women as the control and careful arrangement of the body, are
one way in which societies create idealised national images of race, class, and
femininity. That these idealisations, and the effort required to maintain them, are
often damaging to women and their bodies is widely accepted (Bartky, 1990;
Bordo, 1993; Jeffreys, 2005). What bears further study is the way in which
bodily control, understood as ‘beauty’, builds an image of morality and decency
in Venezuela and other Latin American nations.
Nichols 173

Historical background of race in Venezuela

The great project of building a ‘nosotros nacional’ in Venezuela has indeed trad-
itionally been described by Venezuelans as a project to produce ‘cafe´ con leche’ or
‘coffee with milk’ citizens. However, it has always been understood that more milk
is better than more coffee. In 1940, the Venezuelan poet-politician Andrés Eloy
Blanco chastised an American counterpart on the issue of race relations by saying:
‘In my humble opinion, you have never known how to treat coffee or Negroes. The
former you leave too light, the latter too black’ (Wright, 1995: 1). This sentiment –
that the Afro-descended population would improve with the addition of European
blood – has been shown to be a commonality amongst many Latin American
thinkers (Sommer, 1991; Wright, 1995).
Venezuela’s racial history is similar to that of surrounding nations such as
Colombia, but differs significantly to that of nations such as Mexico or
Argentina. From the time of the first European settlers in the middle of the six-
teenth century, indigenous populations were soon overrun by mainly Spanish
immigrants. While many communities (especially those of the coast) were immedi-
ately devastated, others, such as the Wayao of far western Venezuela, retained their
autonomy and language well into the nineteenth century. Despite the success of
some remote tribes, the majority of indigenous populations of Venezuela were
incorporated by the Spaniards into the encomienda4 system, with the result that
by the end of the colonial era in the early nineteenth century, either there were no
indigenous peoples left in the populated areas of Venezuela, or those who did
identify as indigenous did so only as part of a mixed-race population (Cunill
Grau, 1987; Nichols and Morse, 2010: 189). By this time, indigenous
Venezuelans were understood to be either mixed-race and impoverished people
of colour or indecent, wild men and women who lived in remote corners of the
nation.
The first significant number of African slaves was brought to Venezuela by
Spaniards in the early 1600s to support the production of cacao. Cacao produc-
tion devised a geographic model with separate spheres for cultivation and man-
agement, with white owners preferring to live in cities. The rural areas were then
often associated with ‘barbarism generally and slavery and disease specifically’
(Nichols and Morse, 2010: 191). In the cities, slaves, European-descended immi-
grants, and free people of colour lived side by side in rigidly regulated social
positions. White immigrants born in Europe held the most privileged position.
Those Europeans who could prove their ancestry back to ancestors in Europe
were ‘creole’ and were next on the social ladder. In the rural and coastal areas,
however, less-wealthy white overseers, African slaves, free people of colour, and
indigenous people all interacted and intermarried regularly with limited white
contact.
While a few examples of remote tribes or isolated coastal cities represented small
spaces wherein African and indigenous cultural heritage persisted in colonial
Venezuela, economics and geography created a more general mixing of the popu-
lation. Indeed, as Winthrop Wright (1995) estimates, by the mid-twentieth century,
174 Feminist Theory 14(2)

some 70 per cent of the Venezuelan population could be identified as mixed-race

‘pardos’. This fact led to consternation on the part of the Venezuelan elites during
the colonial period. By the late nineteenth century, Venezuelan scholars Laureano
Vallenilla Lanz and José Gil Fortoul were writing essays that accepted that
Venezuela was a nation of mixed-race people (Hernández González, 1997). These
scholars, however, argued that the long process of mixing had wiped out all traces
of unique African and indigenous identity and had discarded any negative impulse
of the undesirable races (Nichols and Morse, 2010). They held that white blood was
so superior that centuries of its influence would cancel out the negative undesirable
blood (Wright, 1995). Since racial differences have been discounted, no Venezuelan
census has taken information on race since 1854.
What remained, therefore, was the issue of class. Positivist thinkers like Gil
Fortoul opined that the deciding line between decent and indecent, good and
bad, and civilised and uncivilised was found between rich and poor. In his 1853
etiquette manual, Manuel Carreño clearly laid out the fundamental difference
between the rich (white, landed) elite and the poor (landless, African, indigenous
or mixed) majority (Carreño, 2010). Each class deserved its assigned place, Carreño
wrote, and each should accept it. Positivist thought of the period on race argued
that Anglo-Saxon (white) societies were more successful because they had to work
harder. It was therefore logical that people of colour were poorer because they were
naturally lazy and unintelligent (Wright, 1995). What was allowed, however, was
the possibility of racial whitening through the acquisition of funds, status or land.
From this phenomenon comes the widely repeated saying ‘money whitens’. All cafe´
con leche citizens could use wealth and power to bolster their claim to a position of
‘decency’.
This brief historical background helps illustrate the link between assumed
decency and both race and wealth as related to social status. These linkages
remain relevant today. In 2008, Lauren Gulbas completed research in Caracas,
Venezuela, on the relationships among politics, race, class, and gender. Using a
series of structured interviews, surveys, and archival research, Gulbas found that
the nation’s social structure ‘continues to be defined according to a dichotomy
between the ‘‘white’’ and ‘‘wealthy’’ on the one hand and the ‘‘dark’’ and
‘‘poor’’ on the other hand’ (Gulbas, 2008: 138). She also found that markers
of physical appearance still count in deciding the ‘value’ of a person. In Gulbas’
interviews, she encountered a strong trend of contemporary women who linked
the concept of ‘white’ with ‘good’ or ‘good enough’ (Gulbas, 2008). For many
of the women interviewed, the identification of race was dependent not on skin
colour alone, but on both social status and specific physical features such as the
nose or hair. Using a pile-sorting technique, Gulbas found that very curly hair
and wide noses were indicators of ‘blackness’ while skin colour was not, neces-
sarily. Wavy (not curly) hair and a thin nose are associated, in her findings, with
‘refinement’ and show an ‘underlying association with class and status’
while physical features associated with mixed blood are ‘ugly’ and ‘deformed’
(2008: 231).
Nichols 175

Race and literature

Gulbas’ study shows how Venezuela’s racial past has led to a modern preoccupa-
tion with physical beauty that privileges ‘white’ or ‘European’ physical features and
problematises features perceived to be linked to marginalised groups. The roots of
this preoccupation can be seen in the literature of the early twentieth century. There
is significant worth in unpacking the conceptualisations of race, class, and gender
that are embedded in literary texts. As Bordo affirms, it is useful to read ‘literary
works, philosophical works, artworks, film, fashion . . . less naively and more com-
pletely, educated and attuned to the historically pervasive presence of gender-,
class-, and race-coded dualities’ (1993: 16). The works studied here, are, in this
way, windows into the social construction of and attitudes toward race and
women’s bodies in Venezuela.
Indeed, a review of fiction produced between 1920 and 1950 reveals the particu-
lar relevance of racial identification as it was associated with virtue and worth for
women. Already considered to be less rational and less civilised than men, women
of colour fell into the double bind of adding the stigma of savagery and lack of
control associated with their race. This problem is similar to one faced by African-
American women in the United States, who have been described as carrying
‘a triple burden of negative bodily associations’ through association with the temp-
tations of the flesh, with race, and with slavery: ‘for in slavery, her body is not only
treated as an animal body, but is property to be taken and used at will’ (Bordo,
1993: 10–11). In many nations, including Venezuela, the term ‘la negra’ (the black
woman) has historically been synonymous with the above description: a woman
without honour, an erotically charged plaything, or a woman of lower social
standing who is used for the pleasure of men or as a servant of white women
(Carter, 1985: 74; Nichols and Morse, 2010: 210). Some historical understandings
and representations of women’s race were based primarily on skin colour. In
Venezuela, however, other physical features are often linked to perceptions and
identifications of race. Given the more pronounced incidence of racial mixing in
Venezuela, skin colour alone is a problematic marker of status and family position.
For the purposes of this study, I will use two of the main features employed by
researchers such as Gulbas (2008) in the identification of ‘race’ by physical features:
specifically, hair and skin colour.
The roots of long, entrenched processes of image-building in Venezuela can be
seen clearly in the works of the novelists Teresa de la Parra (1889–1936) and
Antonia Palacios (1904–2001). Parra and Palacios are two of the early twentieth-
century’s best-known and most successful Venezuelan authors. Parra, a woman
whose work ‘constitutes the foundation of Venezuelan literature’ (Pantin and
Torres, 2003: 53), shows in all of her novels a preoccupation with the instruction
and enculturation of women. In her novel, Mama Blanca’s Memoirs (1929), this is
explored through the eyes of a young girl. Palacios was an author of similar influ-
ence and interest both for her contemporaries and for succeeding generations of
authors. Of Palacios’ works in prose, the novel Ana Isabel, a Decent Girl (1949) is
arguably the best read and most respected. Like Parra’s novel, the text gives a
176 Feminist Theory 14(2)

glimpse of Venezuelan society from the perspective of a young girl. Both semi-
autobiographical works reveal the preoccupation with beauty for women as a
symbol of class and racial purity. This preoccupation, then, is positioned as a
key element in women’s enculturation as reproductive beings responsible for the
maintenance of wealthy, landed, creole lineage. Both novels provide a realistic
description of the instruction of racial and class-consciousness for young women,
especially as related to notions of honour and decency in early twentieth-century
Venezuela.

Writing of respectability
Teresa de la Parra and Antonia Palacios came to literature from different places of
economic prosperity. Both were the daughters of well-established Venezuelan
families, the type of families whose ‘antiquity’ would have made them responsible
for the breeding of national identity. Parra was born in France, where her father
served in the Venezuelan diplomatic corps. After returning to Venezuela, she lived
for many years on the family’s sugar plantation outside of Caracas. Shortly after
her father’s death in 1910, Parra moved with the family to Spain. Much of Parra’s
life after adolescence was engaged in travel with her family between Venezuela and
Europe. Parra’s most successful early work was the autobiographical Memoirs of
Mama Blanca, which recounts her idyllic childhood on the plantation. However,
this novel is often overshadowed by what is today her most famous work,
Iphigenia: Or the Diary of a Young Girl Who Wrote Because She Was Bored
(1924), a controversial novel that provided a scathing portrait of society life in
Caracas in the 1920s.
As an adult, Parra was well recognised and was often held up as the one author
who represented the tenuous possibility of talent in women, albeit talent that was
always tied to ‘allusions to her beauty and grace’ (Pantin and Torres, 2003: 59). It
also helped that Parra moved in the right social circles. In comparison, women who
wished to enter the literary world but who were not blessed with the physical
beauty or rich family of Parra were criticised and excluded (Pantin and Torres,
2003). Parra’s position meant that she was read by many of her near contempor-
aries, such as Palacios. As modern critics contend, Parra, in questioning conven-
tional marriage, family, and social mores in her novels, committed a ‘sacrificial act’
as a ‘young woman devoured by a nation not yet ready to comprehend’ her attack
on convention (Pantin and Torres, 2003: 59). Young intellectuals would have read
her work, and the nation, ready or not, integrated that questioning into the social
dialogue about women.
Palacios’ upbringing was much more humble. She was born to a respected but
impoverished Caracas family. As a result, Palacios was mainly self-taught, reading
extensively the novels of well-known authors such as Parra. In contrast to Parra’s
experience of estates, travel, and private tutors, Palacios’ childhood was a series of
efforts to maintain appearances while living on the edge of genteel poverty behind
closed doors. Palacios began to write in 1932, and continued her career through the
Nichols 177

publication of novels and poetry including her most famous work, Ana Isabel, a
Decent Girl.
While the two women were separated by fifteen years and an economic gulf,
their novels Mama Blanca’s Memoirs and Ana Isabel, a Decent Girl, show remark-
able similarities in the way that their protagonists approach issues of race and class,
and especially in the way that these concepts manifest themselves in the arena of
perceptions of feminine beauty. The two novels do, however, differ in tone and
structure and are situated in different Venezuelan contexts (rural and urban).
Nonetheless, the similarities are striking, giving a direct perspective of the forma-
tive experiences of a young girl in the intimate family space of a Venezuelan house-
hold. The observations of both young protagonists, their relationships with
servants and family, and their perceptions of their bodies as they grow up link
these two novels as portraits of how girls were instructed to become decent women
with good hair.

Observing race, status, and appearance

A key similarity between the two novels is the way in which the two young pro-
tagonists observe and relate to the household staff. Parra’s novel is related to the
reader in the form of a memoir recounted by the protagonist, Blancanieves. The
girl spends the opening pages describing the members of her household, including
her nanny, Evelyn, brought from the island of Trinidad specifically for her ability
to speak English. This might have led the protagonist to view her nanny as more
educated than other members of the household, as she holds specialised knowledge.
However, much of the description devoted to Evelyn is related to her terrible
facility with the Spanish language and to her appearance. According to
Blancanieves, Evelyn:

bathed us, sewed our clothes, scolded us in a Spanish free of articles and appeared
every morning very turned out in her corset, crisply ironed blouse, apron and leather
belt. Contained in her corset, under her rebellious woolly hair, faintly shining and as
straight as possible, Evelyn, in every moment, gave off an odour of order, symmetry,
command, and a slight hint of coconut oil. (Parra, 2008: 18)

Here, we see that in introducing Evelyn, the elements that the young Blancanieves
finds most important are her lack of facility with Spanish and her appearance.
Later, it will become increasingly obvious that for Blancanieves, while Evelyn is
not a wholly negative figure, neither does she deserve the same respect as members
of the family. Blancanieves continues with how the girls discovered that Evelyn had
come:

for the express and exclusive purpose of teaching us girls English. But we ignored this
detail completely, for the simple reason that, at that time, in spite of Evelyn, we didn’t
have the slightest suspicion that English even existed, a thing that must in any case be
178 Feminist Theory 14(2)

an unnecessary complication. In exchange, in the spirit of justice and compensation,

when Evelyn would say indignantly: ‘Now you’ve dirtied dress, stubborn girl, sitting
on ground,’ we would not reprimand her about articles, things which, in the end, were
hardly indispensable either. (Parra, 2008: 15)

The tone of condescension here is palpable. While Evelyn is the bilingual party
in the conversational exchanges, she is portrayed as the party needing both the help
of the children, and their forgiveness for her less-than-perfect Spanish. In both of
the above descriptions, there is no doubt that Evelyn does not occupy the same
social status as the other women in the house in terms of physical appearance,
economic wealth or possibilities for social advancement. Indeed, appearance is key
to characterisation in the novel, and this description of Evelyn will be discussed in
more depth.
Blancanieves’ description of Evelyn is similar in many ways to her descriptions
of another member of the estate’s staff, Vicente Cochocho. Vicente is a handyman
on the hacienda and a great favourite of Blancanieves and her sisters, but as more
of a pet than a friend. The reader’s first introduction to Vicente is once again
articulated in terms of his appearance, specifically his feet (Parra, 2008: 82).
These feet and his legs, we learn, are ‘short and twisted, always in intimate contact
with the land and the water, always spattered in mud’ (Parra, 2008: 85). The
repeated insistence on the connection of Vicente with the earth and the natural
world is reinforced by the repetitive use of animal metaphors to describe him.
Blancanieves tells us that the last name ‘Cochocho’ is not properly a family
name, but rather a nickname. Cochocho, she informs us, means bug, ‘such a
despicable little bug that you won’t even find it in the dictionary’ (Parra, 2008:
100). Blancanieves’ relationship to Vicente is clearly that of social superior
to inferior.
While Blancanieves’ observations of the household servants are not couched in
overtly negative terms, the titular character of Palacios’ novel has observations
that, while similar, are much more fearful. Palacios’ novel is told in simultaneous
narration, through the eyes of eight-year-old Ana Isabel, a girl who, like Palacios
herself, lives in a precarious state of genteel poverty with her brother, parents, and
a minimal household staff in Caracas. Perhaps because of the much smaller eco-
nomic gap between Ana Isabel and the Afro-descended citizens around her, her
attitudes on the subject of race are much more complex. When Ana Isabel con-
siders the household servant Gregoria (often referred to in the text as ‘la negra’),
she spends a great deal of time considering her appearance. Gregoria is also rep-
resented in terms of uneducated speech, but is more clearly imagined for Ana Isabel
in relation to her physical attributes, as in this passage where she considers
Gregoria’s observation that all souls will be the same in heaven:

If she has to become the same as Gregoria, then Ana Isabel doesn’t want to die. She
doesn’t want to look like Gregoria, with those weepy eyes, red from the smoke, and
those hands . . . Oh Gregoria’s hands! With thick nails and veins and misshapen black
Nichols 179

fingers, twisted from kneading and washing . . . If she is going to have to look like
Gregoria Ana Isabel doesn’t want to die . . . (Palacios, 2009: 23)

Here, Gregoria’s appearance is closely linked to her social status as a servant. The
physical attributes that Ana Isabel finds so terrifying are a result of household
work. However, Ana Isabel additionally has a more nuanced view of the problem-
atic relationship between race, class, and decency that comes from her association
with neighbourhood children who are more closely related to her position econom-
ically, if not in status.
One of these children is the boy Eusebio, once again usually referred to by Ana
Isabel as ‘el negrito Eusebio’ (little black Eusebio) (Palacios, 2009: 75). Eusebio is
the son of a local shop employee and is a great friend to Ana Isabel. She likes to
play with Eusebio because:

Little black Eusebio knows an amazing amount of games and songs. He sings songs
that he writes himself. He says that he pulls them right out of his cap, sticking his hand
up to his woolly head, laughing with such white teeth that Ana Isabel envies him.
(Palacios, 2009: 79)

In this passage, as in others, Ana Isabel shows her respect for Eusebio’s knowledge,
wit, and cleverness, a marked difference from the condescension that Blancanieves
demonstrates. This does not mean that she is ignorant of the gulf between them or
the importance of their differences. While Ana Isabel admires Eusebio enough to
indulge in a childhood infatuation, she knows that any serious relationship is
impossible. What follows in the text is Ana Isabel’s childishly sophisticated con-
sideration of the importance of bloodlines. Even in her impoverished family, her
father has declared, ‘The blood of the Alcantará will never mix with common
blood! We have a pristine bloodline and unsullied family crest’ (Palacios,
2009: 81). Because of this, Ana Isabel knows that she may never marry Eusebio.
The physical characteristics of Evelyn and Gregoria, Vicente and Eusebio are,
for the young girls who interact with them, specific markers of societal importance
(or lack thereof). As both girls grow up, they become even more aware of the
importance of the body and its relationship to notions of decency and honour.
What becomes most clear to both girls, in fact, is the need to control and manage
their own bodies in order not to emulate the socially inferior people with whom
they come into contact.

Civilisation and barbarism: Controlling the wild body

Bordo asserts that women are traditionally cast in the role of ‘the body’, a position
that carries very negative connotations. The cost of this for women ‘is obvious. For
if, whatever the specific historical context of the duality, the body is the negative
term, and if woman is the body, then women are that negativity, whatever it
may be’ (Bordo, 1993: 5; emphasis in original). In the case of Venezuela, the
180 Feminist Theory 14(2)

negativity represented in a woman’s body, and especially the body of a non-white

woman, is the poverty and wildness associated with African and indigenous heri-
tage. Therefore, in order to achieve a higher level of morality and virtue, women’s
bodies needed to be controlled. This imperative is notable in both novels. As semi-
autobiographical works, each novel presents the reader with a historical view of the
instruction that young girls receive on the ‘civilised’ and controlled white version of
corporality.
Returning to the first description of Evelyn, one of the key elements of her
physical description is a desire to control unruly elements of her body. She is
‘contained’ in a corset, and has worked to make her ‘rebellious woolly hair . . . as
straight as possible’. It is this physical control of self that is credited in the passage
for the fact that Evelyn gives off an ‘odour of order, symmetry, command’. Here,
Evelyn clearly endeavours to ally herself with the values of the rich, white family
through her appearance, wearing a European garment (a corset) and endeavouring
to make her hair as straight as possible. For Evelyn, this effort is not one only
concerned with physical appearance. In her desire to control her ‘rebellious’ hair
and body, Evelyn believes herself morally superior to a figure such as Vicente
Cochocho. Evelyn, Blancanieves reports, ‘had declared that Vicente was a filthy
creature, worthy of our highest disgust, and being himself a louse, must have a
head full of them’ (Parra, 2008: 85). Evelyn forbids the girls to talk to Vicente and
names him dirty, uncouth, discourteous, and uneducated (Parra, 2008: 86–87).
This, Blancanieves reflects, reveals Evelyn’s own self-hatred and consists of a

complicated and personal hatred of race. That’s why it was violent and without quar-
ter. Evelyn, who had three quarters of white blood, cursed with that white blood the
black blood. And since it was impossible to abuse the black she had inside her, she
passed the hatred on to Vicente and abused him. (Parra, 2008: 85–86)

Evelyn has been taught not only to control herself, but also to hate a perceived lack
of control in others.
Young Ana Isabel’s instruction in the need for bodily control, especially in those
considered non-white, is communicated even more overtly. From her early years,
when she is taught in the home that ‘the body is the punishment of the soul’
(Palacios, 2009: 50), to her time in school, Ana Isabel learns the rules governing
race, moral values, and their relationship to physical appearance. In school and in
the home, Ana Isabel has been taught that ‘blacks are not decent people’ (Palacios,
2009: 78). Considering this, she thinks about her friends and acquaintances who are
considered black, including Nicasia, Estefanı́a, Eusebio and Carmencita, and how
perceptions of them as indecent rule her interactions: ‘They don’t let her hang out
with black people’ (Palacios, 2009: 78). Though they live in the same neighbour-
hood, these are people that Ana Isabel knows are poorer than she is, and she is not
allowed to play with them because of their perceived lack of moral value. Ana
Isabel has learned that there is a clear, bright line linking ‘whiteness’ and decency,
linking appearance and culture.
Nichols 181

This is why, as with Evelyn, members of Ana Isabel’s community make such an
effort to appear as white as possible. One of the saddest episodes in the novel comes
when Ana Isabel reaches out to her friend Carmencita. As earlier descriptions of
Carmencita reveal, her physical attributes tend more to African-descended features
than to the aspirational ‘white’ European ideal, with ‘her little dark face and two
braids, so tangled like no one ever brushed them. But they do get brushed, because
Ana Isabel has seen her on Sundays, very smoothed out with coconut oil and two
red ribbons on the end of her braids . . . ’ (Palacios, 2009: 15). As with Evelyn, effort
is made to tame Carmencita’s hair and make it more ‘civilised’. When Ana Isabel
innocently seeks to invite Carmencita to a neighbourhood party, it is clear that
these efforts are for naught. When Carmencita appears, the hostess explains why
Carmencita cannot stay. The party, the lady explains, is only for the birthday girl’s
friends. The fact that Carmencita plays with the girls every day is ‘not the same’
(Palacios, 2009: 100). What’s more, she is told, ‘We do not know who her mother
is, or her father . . . ’ (Palacios, 2009: 100). Ana Isabel is confused by this. She knows
that Carmencita’s parents are well known to the neighbourhood. What she is
missing is the code embedded in the explanation, the justification of exclusion
based on lineage and purity of blood. Carmencita’s parents are ‘not known’ to
society in their condition as non-white and non-rich. Therefore, the daughter is not
allowed to attend the party because her morals are automatically suspect due to her
lineage.

Good hair
Blancanieves and Ana Isabel do not learn the moral imperative of body control
through observation alone, however. Both receive specific instruction on the topic
as well. This leads, in both novels, to a specific type of control that both girls and
their families seek over their bodies: good hair.5 In each novel, the girls’ hair rep-
resents their status, their place in society, and in many ways, the family’s honour
and value.
Blancanieves’ mother is described as a picture of gentility, honour, and beauty.
As a traditional upper class woman, her body reflects careful management and
breeding. She dresses meticulously in silks, ribbons, and taffetas, and can normally
be found in her hammock, ‘in a white dress, covered in flounces and lace, attended
by a maid, with her hair spilling in cascades . . . ’ (Parra, 2008: 21). The struggle for
this beauty does not come as easily for Blancanieves, as is seen clearly in the fourth
chapter of the novel, which is entirely concerned with the matter of Blancanieves’
hair. We learn that the girls’, ‘silky, large curls’ represent a significant part of the
family’s identity (Parra, 2008: 32). The problem is that Blancanieves’ curls are not
natural. Her hair is silky, yes, but is stick-straight. This is a great trial to her
mother, whose vanity, ‘much more than in her own person . . . had fixed its atten-
tion on our six heads’ (Parra, 2008: 31).
For Blancanieves’ mother, that her daughter’s hair does not conform to societal
expectations is deeply shameful. It is therefore her job to fight the rebellious hair.
182 Feminist Theory 14(2)

Indeed, as the lady of the house of a wealthy plantation, taming Blancanieves’ hair
is the only work she pursues. Blancanieves relates, ‘Since Mama was a mother, she
was obliged to be embroiled in a battle without quarter that must be renewed every
morning’ (Parra, 2008: 33). As Blancanieves remembers, ‘If mother suffered from
the fact that I had straight hair, I suffered a thousand times more’ as ‘that immod-
erate interest in my hair caught in its claws a great part of my time’ (Parra,
2008: 34). Blancanieves is forced to sit every day while her mother puts her hair
in curling papers, applying a series of ever-more-elaborate potions to her hair, all in
an effort to achieve the acceptable appearance.
The reason for Blancanieves’ mother’s deep concern for hair is partially com-
municated in a conversation recounted in the same chapter when her mother asks:
‘But from where did you get this terribly straight hair, Blancanieves, my dear
daughter?’ (Parra, 2008: 33). This reproach provides insight into the source of
her mother’s concern. The origin of, or the lineage that might have produced
such hair is of utmost importance. Hair that is too wavy, coarse, or curly would
indicate an undesirable amount of African heritage. Conversely, hair that is too
straight suggests indigenous blood. In either case, a woman’s hair is representative
of her family’s bloodline. As a mother it is a woman’s responsibility not only to
present perfectly groomed girls to the world, but also to prove her own reproduct-
ive responsibility by having given birth to children with perfect appearances. Her
mother’s concern, as well as the strict lesson on taming the unmanageable body, are
all explicitly communicated to Blancanieves, who learns by the age of five that she
has an ‘arduous duty to appear beautiful’ (Parra, 2008: 35).
In the case of Blancanieves and her mother, the deficit in nature is made up for
by the willingness to work, and by the self-control and abnegation found in the
hours and hours spent in front of a mirror. If the ideal of white beauty cannot be
achieved by perfect breeding, Blancanieves learns, self-sacrifice is an acceptable
substitute. Ana Isabel learns the same lesson as she faces similar struggles with
her hair, engaging in more specific consideration of the relationship between
beauty, morality and women’s hair. Early in the novel, Ana Isabel thinks about
the funeral of a prominent member of the upper class, Miss Ercilia. Ana Isabel had
often seen Miss Ercilia walking to mass with ‘her black hair parted into two wings,
straight and symmetrical, which peeked out of her headscarf’ (Palacios, 2009: 21).
Miss Ercilia is lauded for her piety by the local priest, and Ana Isabel finds that this
hairstyle, controlled and managed, fits the situation perfectly, a young woman of
high status who follows society’s moral and religious expectations. Ana Isabel’s
father, however, is quick to explain that Miss Ercilia’s family has not always been
rich: ‘A few years ago they were walking around barefoot and now look at the airs
they put on’ (Palacios, 2009: 21). This leads Ana Isabel to think about Miss Ercilia
on the plains, and specifically about her hair:

A few years ago they were walking around barefoot in the open country. Miss Ercilia
didn’t have that cleanly parted, smooth, and symmetrical hair under pleats of a fine
Spanish scarf, because she didn’t wear such a fine scarf in the breeze of the plains, only
Nichols 183

two tangled, black, and heavy plaits that fell to her shoulder and sometimes, the flame
of a brightly coloured flower braided in them. (Palacios, 2009: 21)

When Ana Isabel imagines Miss Ercilia, she is poor, close to the earth and wild.
Her hair reflects this, tangled and woven with flowers. In the city, ‘the plaits came
apart and in their place came those symmetrical straight wings’ (Palacios, 2009: 21).
For Ana Isabel, respectability and civilisation is directly translated to a change in
hairstyle.
Both Blancanieves and Ana Isabel learn that hair needs to be ‘white’, needs to be
controlled; it cannot be left natural and must be beautiful. Both girls learn the
lesson that attention must be paid to controlling their bodies and especially to their
hair, as it represents their place in the social, economic, and racial structure. In one
of the last chapters of Ana Isabel, Eusebio dies, and with him, Ana Isabel’s child-
hood dies too. It is no coincidence, then, that the penultimate chapter of the novel
opens with Ana Isabel at the mirror, brushing her hair. She has, we learn, spent
more than an hour trying to manage her hair, trying to make it perfect. Her brother
Jaime wants to play in the park as before, but her childhood is behind her. As a
‘decent’ young woman, she is now concerned with appearance and bodily control.

Conclusions: Beauty and virtue, struggle and sacrifice

Throughout this article, I have illustrated how the importance of racial purity is
understood as a demonstration of moral virtue. In the drive to produce ever more
modern and ‘European’ citizens who would increase the civilisation of the state,
women were responsible for full control of their bodies both before and after
conception. Women were tasked with maintaining as white a bodily image as pos-
sible in order to find a suitable mate who would allow them to bear a whiter child
than the previous generation. This maintenance required a great deal of work and
control. Women needed to be very careful in their appearance, in their clothing, in
their skin and hair care, to produce the desired result. Thus, a perfectly dressed and
arranged woman could be assumed to have a strong work ethic, high family and
moral values, and a great deal of self-control; the ideal citizen for the state.
These ideas help give insight into the contemporary situation of women in
Venezuela. Firstly, as Gulbas asserts, it is necessary to understand how ‘patriarchal
attitudes towards the body are also situated within broader discourses of race and
social class’ (2008: 4). The constructions of societal ideals of race, social class, and
gender may tell us much about the position of women within Venezuelan society.
This is particularly important in a context where race is often dismissed or ignored
as a factor in social status or relationships. In addition, an understanding of the
historical roots of beauty practices in Venezuela may provide further insight
regarding the avenues open to women as they move into public life. A preliminary
look at this topic suggests that contemporary women’s ability to shape their bodies
into acceptable forms is understood as a guarantee of success (Gulbas, 2008: 15).
With this greater understanding, cultural phenomena that might otherwise be
184 Feminist Theory 14(2)

dismissed as irrelevant acquire serious scholarly interest. One example would be the
international reputation of modern Venezuela as a nation that places high value on
feminine beauty, going to great lengths to achieve it.6 Research estimates that
20 per cent of all average household incomes in Venezuela are spent on beauty
products and enhancements (Obiko Pearson, 2006). There is much to be learned
from the fact that Venezuelan women see the examples of the nation’s beauty
workers – pageant winners and contestants who go on to high-profile careers –
as models of success to follow (Nichols and Morse, 2010). As Juan Andrés Bello
demonstrates in his documentary La reina del pueblo (The people’s queen) (2010),
beauty pageants in Venezuela have a long history not only of uniting Venezuelans
around a ‘decent’ candidate, but also of grooming women to represent national
ideals through an aspirational ideal of physical attractiveness. That the ideal is both
‘civilised’ and ‘white’ can be viewed as a product of fear. In this case, the fear is
built by society, which communicates the message that the ‘wild’ and ‘savage’
elements of African or indigenous culture that persisted in remote areas through
the colonial period will ‘infect’ the pure and ancient bloodlines of the nation. For
this reason, in order to civilise, control (and whiten) the nation, women and their
wild bodies must be disciplined. Hair must be straightened (or curled), skin must be
lightened, and noses must be thinner. Only through further analysis of the beauty
work, images, and practices of the Venezuelan nation can these complex contem-
porary interrelationships be understood.
The novels studied here show the historical roots of those relationships as well as
how they were built and maintained. Autobiographical novels such as Ana Isabel, a
Decent Girl or Mama Blanca’s Memoirs, however fictionalised, offer a window into
the enculturation of the young into gendered and racialised standards and expect-
ations of beauty. Further research into the cultural production of both historical
and contemporary Venezuela will provide significant advances into the understand-
ing of women’s position and gender relations in the nation.

Notes
1. Beauty Obsession (2002).
2. All translations of work originally written in Spanish are courtesy of the author unless
otherwise noted.
3. Mestizaje, a concept popularised by José Vasconcelos (1997), describes an idealised Latin
American citizen, a ‘mestizo’ who is a perfect mix of the indigenous, European and
African-descended citizens of the region.
4. The encomienda was an economic and political system through which the Spanish crown
gave white landowners the right to use the labour of a certain number of indigenous
people as part of their ownership of the land (Keen, 2003).
5. In Venezuelan Spanish, the phrase ‘good hair’ is commonly used to refer to fine,
European-style hair, or ‘white’ hair. ‘Bad hair’ in this usage is hair perceived to be too
African in appearance.
6. Between 1985 and 2010 Venezuela produced more international beauty pageant winners
than any other nation (Nichols and Morse, 2010: 328).
Nichols 185

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