Beauty matters? Aesthetic labor and semiotic violence in the political field

This study examines the Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s (2011-2016) work of aesthetic change during her election campaign. Through a Bourdieusian analysis of the political field, drawing on interviews with her image team and media coverage (Estadão, Folha, G1, O Globo, Veja), we demonstrate how her campaign orchestrated strategic bodily transformations to creating the “Dilmãe” matron image – to seduce their supporters and various sectors of society. Bourdieusian analysis shows her team negotiated: hair lightening for approachability, pearls for respectability, and softened tailoring for maternal authority. However, this accumulated aesthetic capital was subsequently disqualified by the field’s androcentric logic. Post-election, these same choices were weaponized as either “hysterical” (excessively feminine) or “unlikable” (insufficiently feminine). We identify: (1) a competence-beauty paradox forcing impossible negotiations, and (2) how compulsory aesthetic labor sustains masculine domination (Bourdieu, 1998) by demanding women politicians perform contradictory bodily hexis. Ultimately, this case demonstrates that aesthetic scrutiny functions as a mechanism of semiotic violence (Krook, ­2022), structurally undermining women’s political legitimacy. The findings challenge meritocratic illusions within political fields, revealing the control of female corporeality as a key mechanism for perpetuating women’s exclusion from the full democratic exercise, thereby exposing democracy’s inherent gendered contradictions.