Cabelo, Corpo e Identidade: etnografia sobre a construção da identidade de mulheres trans e travestis em Manaus

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze the relationship between hair, body, and identity, and their modes of interaction in the formation of the identity of trans women and travestis in Manaus. This ethnography seeks to understand the representative, social, and cultural dimensions that hair plays, beyond being an aesthetic component attached to the body. Based on the generational profile of the interlocutors and their class affiliations, it was possible to understand the emic notions they presented about the role of the hair on their heads in the constitution of social markers of difference, such as race, social belonging, and class. The body also appears as an emic variant in the narratives of the interlocutors, demonstrating a dismantling of the stabilized notions of what the body, gender, and identity are. These relationships presented throughout the research also make it possible to understand the knowledge, skills, and distinct practices that these women demonstrate in caring for their hair, their bodies, and maintaining the aesthetic conditions produced on, by, and for the body, as well as the interface that emerges in public and private spaces. Thus, the very notion of "woman" and "womanhood" is constantly revisited and rethought based on the life trajectory narratives of these women, as well as their own notions about it. At first, the research addresses sex, gender, and body, revisiting these analytical categories and discussing them from the definitions of the interlocutors. After this discussion, following the criteria of a dense, detailed, and situated ethnographic writing, I discuss hair and the making of body-identity through the participants' life trajectory narratives and, consequently, the results of participant observations. The study was primarily constituted through interviews and participant observation in different situations of these women's daily lives. Social media was also used for data gathering and collection. Finally, the results demonstrate how Manaus directly impacts the perceptions of gender and identity notions, body care and self-care, sociability modes, navigation through the city, and the complex relationships with hair.