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“Looking Good” and “Good Looking” in School: Beauty Ideals, Appearance, and Enskilled Vision among Girls in a London Secondary School

Anthropology & Education Quarterly

Published online on

Abstract

This article explores the enskillment of vision through which girls in a London school learn to see bodies and selves in particular ways. Dominant body and beauty ideals inform these processes but cannot be reduced to them. Drawing from the anthropological literature on situated learning and the senses, I propose an anthropological approach to girls’ bodily dissatisfaction that starts from everyday life rather than the assumed primacy of media images.