Of Makeup Hauls and Holy Grails: Examining the Conceptions of Beauty in an Online Discussion Thread

Jaimee Marie B. Serrano

This paper explores on the discourse of makeup in the Philippines and its implications on the ideals or standards of beauty in the country. It examines the language of an online community of makeup enthusiasts and how they negotiate and construct the meaning of beauty. These constructions of ideals are products of the combination of the members’ diverse backgrounds and the real-time and interactive nature of the internet, along with its wide reach and mobility. Such factors create a specialized language that enable the community to interact with each other more effectively, creating a community of practice (CoP) founded on common interest. Thus, along with the uncovering of the definition of beauty, it also attempts to unravel new forms of language that are characteristic of the CoP. The corpus of the study is composed of online interactions among members of the CoP, along with individual online interviews. Through these, the paper discusses the CoP’s definitions of beauty that are also anchored on their preferences in beauty products and ideal facial features.