Paper short abstract:

In this paper I explore how young Bamileke women living in Yaounde (Cameroon) embody gender in practices of photography and dress

Paper long abstract:

Young Bamileke women engage in a set of creative bodily practices including: rubbing their skins with bleaching creams and oils, applying pressure and heat to their hair, dressing their bodies in fashionable garments in such a way as to create contrast and sheen that attracts the eye and so on. Then they display their bodies for the camera lens during sessions in photographic studios, at different ceremonies and for their phones cameras; taking on a variety of poses that are modelled on those of celebrities from local and international popular culture. Although some see these figures as role models, most of young woman appropriate only some aspects of their appearance, such as make-up, dress or hair style, that they define as feminine. 

When young women appropriate different appearances this is rarely verbalised, and when it is, claims are made in terms of feeling and affect. As practices involving their bodies, dressing and posing work on the senses as appearances are embodied. Furthermore, through the different aesthetic performances, young women are able to engage and disengage male desire and seduce or repel others. Through dress and photography, I argue, young women work on their bodies to transform themselves into feminine subjects. The feeling of gender emerges on the surface of skin when substances are rubbed in, dresses hold their bodies or when young woman are posing whereas photographs sediment it, visually and materially.