To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World by Yiman Wang (review).
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Clutario offers insightful and creative analyses of various archival texts; however, for a book that focuses much of its content on sartorial presentation, there are not enough images conveying the sartorial practices that she notes throughout the book. The book would have only been strengthened with the inclusion of these images allowing the reader to fully grasp the importance of these garments in shaping the national discourse. Beauty Regimes unearths the complex ways beauty battles with and againstcolonial power structures and the various ways that colonial subjects resist and(re)create national identities. The book will be of interest to scholars offeminism, fashion, colonialism, empire, and nation-building. Methodologically,Clutario demonstrates creative ways to read archival material and provides anew lens in which to examine the complicated relationships between Filipinosand Americans. In taking the role of beauty seriously, the author demonstrateshow colonial projects affect even seemingly innocuous everyday practices ofdressing oneself and consumption of popular media and are equally as importantto analyze as political texts in understanding how nations are formed.
Author: Anna Marinela Lopez
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7082284617
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