The core questions guiding the elicitation were:
Who do Dominicanwomen consider beautiful? Is the norm closer to, or further from, white-
ness or blackness?
How are “Hispanic looks” conceptualized? What is the relationship between aesthetic preferences and social status?
What happens in the case of someone who is very
light but has “bad hair”?
How do contemporary Dominican women and girls look at pictures of African American women who look like
them and yet distance themselves from this similarity?
What is taking place when women at the salon identify with the women in the white hairstyles
book, and distance themselves adamantly from those in the African Ameri- can hairstyles book? Are they doing psychic violence to themselves?
